Stoke vs Manchester United match report: Louis van Gaal left fighting for his job after latest defeat

8 years ago

Stoke vs Manchester United match report: Louis van Gaal left fighting for his job after latest defeat

There were reminders of what Manchester United used to stand for, from their own contingent: “20 times, 20 times Man United”; the Five Cantonas song and “world champions twice”, once more than England – though what followed on the field of play revealed just how catastrophically they have fallen from those giddy heights.

The last kick of the first-half was a metaphor for all that had preceded, as Manchester United crumbled in the face of opposition they defeated four times and drew with once here under the aegis of Sir Alex Ferguson. Daley Blind, under no pressure when making to cross, miskicked, putting the ball out of play, and landed on his backside. That’s how it had been until then: a scuffed performance during which Stoke prodded Louis van Gaal’s side around the edges and found that its structure was fabricated from powder.

They’ll tell you that Xherdan Shaqiri, Marko Arnautovic and Bojan aren’t ‘Manchester United players.’ Well, this was a day to revise that kind of high-and-mighty judgement, not to mention all the fancy Old Trafford aspirations about wanting to sign Balon d’Or nominees.

The big ideas have obscured the need for intent, desire, and the old-fashioned capacity to beat a man, as Arnautovic and Shaqiri frequently did, to the intense embarrassment of Ashley Young and Daley Blind: two men operating at full -back when they were patently not made for such a role. Also obscured was their desperate need for a player who can pass. The sublime technician Bojan did so, supplying the balls that sent Arnautovic and Shaqiri off on their merry way. Ander Herrera manifestly did not, despite the Van Gaal “gameplan” that, it transpired, envisaged that it was best to play him and drop Rooney to the substitute’s bench for the first time in the Dutchman’s 18 months as manager.

What we witnessed from Van Gaal in the aftermath of defeat was no more encouraging than his team’s delivery on the pitch. From the very beginning of his time at Manchester United, you wondered how his way of intellectualising the game would work at The Theatre of Dreams. To observe him, 20 minutes after the final whistle last night, talking of how pressure and fear had paralysed his team and how he had “analysed that as a consequence of circumstances” made you wonder where the hell straightforward ways of winning games had disappeared.

It was some admission he offered when conceding it was beyond his power to help his players deal with this pressure. “I don’t think the manager can [quell] the pressure,” he said. “I do my utmost best to find solutions to cope… but at the end my players must do that to cope. You can say I have failed. I don’t think it is like that.”

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That decision to drop Rooney was perfectly acceptable, considering the extent of his own diminution, though nowhere in the manager’s strategising was account taken of what Memphis Depay would bring to this party. His contribution to the opening goal was an embarrassment – dithering and then dipping his head towards the ball in a hopeless attempt to navigate it back to his goalkeeper, thus allowing Glen Johnson to intercept it and cross for Bojan to place between Phil Jones legs and into the net, after 19 minutes. His offering at the other end of the field was inconsequential. Arnautovic can look wild at times, though in a game to which he contributed vastly, the look in his eye and energy in his legs taunted United.

The game was gone in the minute that Young’s own inexplicable decision-making gave Hughes’s side the platform for their second goal. Young earned a yellow card for deliberate handball when Arnautovic clipped over his head on the edge of United’s box and the ensuing Bojan free kick was blocked into the path of Arnautovic, who arced a right-footed free-kick into the top right-hand corner of David de Gea’s net.

There was consolation, of sorts, for Van Gaal in the way United recovered after the interval. Just beyond the hour, Rooney fought to get a cross in from the right for Marouanne Fellaini to hit the target. Hughes praised goalkeeper Jack Butland’s save, though in truth the Belgian striker had exactly the same as Blind had, scuffing his goal attempt.

With the lead firmly in his pocket, Hughes – a wise and impressive manager who you fancy would be much more use to United than Van Gaal at this juncture – closed up the shop. The more attack-minded Shaqiri made way for Mame Diouf and captain Ryan Shawcross provided another big defensive display to deny the visiting team a route back into the game and leaving them seven games without a win.

United’s assistant manager, Ryan Giggs, strode off ahead of Van Gaal at the end, once again, and though no opprobrium was voiced as the head coach made his way past the massed travelling supporters, it did feel like the occasion we will ultimately come to describe as the beginning of the end.

Stoke City: (4-2-3-1) Butland; Johnson, Shawcross, Wollscheid, Pieters; Whelan, Cameron; Shaqiri (Diouf, 65), Afellay, Arnautovic; Bojan.

Manchester United: (4-2-3-1) De Gea; Young, Jones, Smalling, Blind; Carrick, Herrera (Perreira, 82); Depay (Rooney 45), Fellaini, Mata; Martial.

Referee: Kevin Friend.

Man of the match: Bojan (Stoke)

Match rating: 7/10