Newcastle vs Manchester United, St. James’ Park, Tuesday 12th January 2016 in The Barclays Premier League. Kick off 19:45 GMT
NEWCASTLE: Elliot, Janmaat, Coloccini, Mbemba, Dummett, Sissoko, Tiote, Wijnaldum, Gouffran, Ayoze Perez, Mitrovic
MANCHESTER UNITED: De Gea,Young, Smalling, Blind, Darmian, Schneiderlin, Fellaini, Lingard, Herrera, Martial, Rooney
Subs: Romero, Borthwick-Jackson, McNair, Weir, Mata, Pereira, Memphis.
Surely (x3 at least) Louis van Gaal can’t last too much longer at Manchester United if this form continues.
He has stated this week that he isn’t always happy with performances:
“There are matches that I have enjoyed,”.
“And there are also matches where I’m very bored or angry because we are not disorganising our opponent’s defence, but that is football.”
But we aren’t talking about the odd bad performance. This is a trend and we have to look back to the Manchester United vs Manchester City game at Old Trafford last season for a performance in which we felt that United were last fabulous.
LvG clearly has either a very benevolent or very indecisive boss in Ed Woodward. Because most teams in the bottom half of the league would surely have sacked their manager based on the form shown in the last two months – let alone the most expensively assembled team in Premier League history.
To his credit, Louis hasn’t blamed Manchester United’s form on injuries. But he has also failed to understand that the status quo isn’t even close to acceptable. His assertion that United fans should be happy with the Sheffield United result demonstrates a worrying lack of empathy for quite what a serial winner this club has been and how a United manager needs to behave.
We would have given him the boot before Christmas. Another bad week and he will surely go? Over to you Ed.
