Why Manchester United Must Stick with Van Gaal Over Mourinho Next Season

If you’re like most Man United fans this season, you’ve no doubt wanted Louis van Gaal’s head on a spike (metaphorically speaking, I hope) at some point in the last few months. With dour football at Old Trafford, dreadful losses and an embarrassing Champions League campaign, surely he should go, right? Get the special one in and all that.

I thoroughly disagree.

Here are three reasons why the man has to stay, and before you cry, “scouser-in-disguise!”, I’m a season ticket holder myself at the theatre of Dreams.

 

Mourinho doesn’t play great football

Seriously ask yourself, what does Mourinho do that van Gaal doesn’t? On the pitch, Mourinho’s style of play has been infamously duller than dull at every single team he’s managed, Chelsea especially. United fans chastising van Gaal for playing unadventurous football aren’t suddenly going to see 1970-era Brazil on the pitch every week if Jose takes the manager’s job in the summer.

It’ll be the grinding wins that have mostly come at Old Trafford this year, but with a younger face in the dugout. Last season (14/15), by the final day with Chelsea as league champions they’d only scored 9 goals more than Man United (Chelsea F73 Man Utd F62). Hardly that many more over the course of a season.

 

“Ah but at least Mourinho wins!”

You’ve no doubt said that reading the last paragraph to yourself, but to you I argue this – after his admittedly short time at Chelsea this season, Mourinho had dragged Chelsea to hanging perilously over the relegation zone. When Mourinho had been sacked Chelsea were 16th in the league, 1 point above the relegation zone. Utd were 4th in the Champions League places. He doesn’t even have the winning factor any more.

Do you really think Mourinho could change it all around in one summer and get United to challenge for the title in his first year in the United job? He couldn’t even do it at Chelsea second time around, and he’d need at least one year at United to implement his regime on the players before they got playing to his style. Mourinho won’t fit better than van Gaal at Old Trafford.

 

Mourinho doesn’t use youth, van Gaal does

This point encapsulates the biggest reason as to why Mourinho shouldn’t get the Manchester United job. Louis Van Gaal has blooded the exact same number of academy players in less than two seasons at United as Mourinho has at both of his spells at Chelsea (13). One could argue that van Gaal’s choice was born of desperation through injuries this season, which to an extent is true.

However, of the players he’s brought through most have actually got significant league game-time, if not staying in the first team outright. Jesse Lingard (14 apps), Paddy McNair (7 apps) and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson (8 apps) have all played this season in the Premier League. And I think it’s gong to be hard to argue that Marcus Rashford won’t be playing regularly for the remainder of the season (injury-permitting) after his sublime start to his United career firing in braces against Midtjylland and Arsenal.

Now compare that with Mourinho’s academy players this season in the league, Bertrand Traore (3 apps) and Ruben Loftus-Cheek (5 apps), I think it’s fair to say that van Gaal gives youth a chance more.

Louis van Gaal will not go down as the greatest Manchester United manager in history. But he will go down as the man who was brought in to do a job and who has for the most part done what has been asked of him. United are only 3 points from the Champions League places (with Man City, Leicester and Tottenham still to play mind), in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup and are in the last 16 of the Europa League. United aren’t challenging for the Premier League title this season but we don’t have a god-given right to win it. United are in a stage of transition and before he’d taken charge of his first game, Louis van Gaal said that he’d need three years to get United back as title-challengers.

Let’s give him that time and let him finish the job.