Van Gal: Man Utd lucky to escape Tottenham

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At least it was better than this time last year. Then the bright, new, dawn of Louis van Gaal’s managerial reign started on a summer’s day at Old Trafford with a 2-1 defeat to Swansea. And on that day United were truly awful.

On Saturday they were merely ponderous and leggy. Nothing like a side that might challenge for the title, mind, but they weren’t terrible.

And there were some genuine positives on which to draw. Memphis Depay was sharp and enthusiastic, bringing much-needed pace and incision to United’s forward line; Matteo Darmian’s thrusting runs down the right will be a feature of the season with Louis van Gaal awarding him the prize of best debutant on the day.
And then there was Sergio Romero, of whom it was difficult to know what to make. He started like a man who had been plucked from Sampdoria’s reserves and who hadn’t played a single minute of football for his new club; all nerves, flappy hands and loose passes.
By the finish, though the Stretford End were chanting his name after the vital late saves he made from Christian Eriksen. His charisma and energy suggests he will be a crowd favourite and will have a role. Whether that will be as a genuine United No 1 seems much less likely.
Amongst the remaining debutants, Morgan Schneiderlin looked tidy and Bastian Schweinsteiger finally appeared on the hour, and his first significant contribution was to be booked for hacking at Nacer Chadli as he struggled to chase down the Tottenham man.
It’s early days and all that but for £80m worth of summer spending, there wasn’t an awful lot to show.
And if United did wish to be taken seriously you might have thought they would have sorted out their goalkeeping situation for the start of the season. After all, they’ve only had all summer to consider it. At times, it appeared as though a convention of alternative United keepers had gathered at Old Trafford. In the stands sat Anders Lindegaard, David de Gea and Victor Valdes, the latter two happily laughing and conversing. All are options; none apparently able to play for United.
Van Gaal knew it wasn’t great and unusually for a football manager he doesn’t try to hide it. The first question he faced was pointedly about the performance, rather than result. ‘Why you didn’t ask about the result?’ he said, fixing his interrogator with a stare a stern professor might reserve for a student.
‘It’s already a little bit suggestive,’ he added. Only then came the smile. ‘But you are right. The most important thing is that we have won because there was a lot of pressure on this match because of last year, when our start was very bad. I said in the preparation: “This is the match” Maybe I laid too much pressure on this match.
‘You had two high-level teams pressing high and neither team could cope with that pressure. That, we have to improve. We couldn’t cope with the pressure. We were lucky today.’
As for Tottenham, they were good for twenty minutes at the beginning and ten minutes at the end; In between, not so much. They started much the better and hustled and harried a ragged-looking United midfield. Mauricio Pochettino has eschewed long pre-season tours in order to work his team properly in London and it paid a degree of dividend in that they were clearly fitter.
They looked sharper, fresher and more incisive in midfield and indeed looked more likely to score early on. The best opening chance came on six minutes, Juan Mata giving the ball away and Harry Kane dinking a lovely ball to Christian Eriksen. The Dane brought the ball down beautifully but with a wild Romero approaching he lifted his shot over. It might have been goal of the season within six minutes of the season had he scored, but it wasn’t to be.
Yet after 23 minutes of having the upper hand, Tottenham contrived to fall behind. Nabil Bentaleb, attempting to play out from midfield, passed straight to Mata who fed Depay who in turn played in Ashley Young.
Even then Toby Alderweirweld might have blocked the coming cross but Young had time and space to find Wayne Rooney. As the England centre forward sized up his first goal of the season, Kyle Walker intervened with a decisive challenge; decisive in that he took the ball off the foot of Rooney and directed it into the bottom corner. DailyMail.