WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Manchester United were so pathetic against Midtjylland that the fans who paid £71 for their tickets only proved that the team, currently, are not worth the money. Their protests should be directed at Louis van Gaal for producing amateur football for which the fans have to pay professional prices for the very dubious “privilege” of being able to watch. Not to mention flying to Denmark and, probably, staying in a rip-off hotel overnight!

Before the game David De Gea pulled up with an injury which ruled him out and he was replaced by Sergio Romero. This brought United’s injury list up to 14 according to van Gaal. De Gea actually wasn’t missed as Romero had a very good game.

After the game van Gaal blamed Murphy’s law for losing a game they should have won. As we all know only too well van Gaal will blame anything or anybody rather than himself.

The bottom line here is that van Gaal, thanks to his disastrous transfer window, doesn’t have sufficient cover in various important positions and the players he is currently using are not good enough. Quoting the loss of Rooney for six weeks as a shock is an example of the lunacy currently presiding at Old Trafford. Only a matter of weeks ago the vast majority of fans wanted him dropped from the team. How come it suddenly makes such a difference when he is injured? He may have scored a couple of goals recently but he still wasn’t playing THAT well.

The transfer policy was questioned after the game. the CEO position was questioned after the game. Neither of these points were relevant to the game itself, where United were beaten by the equivalent of a decent Championship team.

Questioning the transfer policy is the same as questioning van Gaal. United try and buy the players HE wants, so the blame cannot be deflected by quoting the transfer policy as an example of failure. In a similar way, the CEO will try and get the players wanted by the manager. There can be problems with this, though, depending upon who the CEO is. Some will be naive and miss a buy-out clause thereby paying more for a player than was necessary. Others may just vastly overpay for an average player then lose a fortune when selling him a year later. This is why the bigger clubs tend to have an ex-player as Director of Football, it lessens the chance of mistakes.

Leaving aside van Gaal’s excuses, his Manchester United team just aren’t good enough at present. Since finishing fourth last season he has spent millions and gone backwards. Watching United is painful for every supporter although some will still overpay for a ticket then moan about it afterwards, what is the point of that?

Next Monday, Manchester United are away to Shrewsbury in the FA Cup. After this result in Denmark I would make Shrewsbury slight favourites for the tie. Normally I would expect a reaction to a defeat such as the one suffered in Denmark but not with this team.

It was the same when they lost to Sunderland on Saturday. The likes of Chris Smalling come out for interviews and say how “it wasn’t good enough”, or, “we have to be better”. Then Michael Carrick appears and says exactly the same as Smalling. This season they are using these cliches more than in any other season. They never come out and say, “we were that bad that we are donating all our wages for this week to charity”. No, they never think they are THAT bad. Then the next performance is just as bad, if not worse, than the previous one.

In the game of life this result is the equivalent of Louis van Gaal receiving yet another yellow card. When, oh when is he going to get the red one? Please put us all out of our misery. At this rate a new manager will having nothing left to go for!