This is reminiscent of Rio's stories after Moyes don't you think?
Well, you can't have it both ways. You criticised me for saying that Giggs, as Assistant Manager, will just be following Van Gaal's orders - which to me is a perfectly logical conclusion.
People who don't know LVG and his history with players shouldn't jump too quickly to conclusions here. His man-management is one the poorest for any manager out there. Just ask any player he managed at Barcelona, Bayern or the Dutch squad.
Also, it is very obvious that our downfall with lvg was basically down to his 'philosophy' not the players. The players were quite obviously executing his poor 'philosophy' on the field, nothing wrong with the execution. It's the philosophy that failed. Also our players showed a lot of spirit in all their games. People trash talking Rooney should have a word with themselves after his moment of individual determination (not van gaal's impotent philosophy) was what won us the FA cup two days ago.
Also, it is very obvious that our downfall with lvg was basically down to his 'philosophy' not the players. The players were quite obviously executing his poor 'philosophy' on the field, nothing wrong with the execution. It's the philosophy that failed. Also our players showed a lot of spirit in all their games. People trash talking Rooney should have a word with themselves after his moment of individual determination (not van gaal's impotent philosophy) was what won us the FA cup two days ago.
Ah yes, evil Giggsy and his empire of doom trying to conspire and scheme his way to the manager's chair as if it's the fecking Iron Throne. What an embarrassing thread. The only thing that surprises me about this thread is people haven't found a way to blame Fergie and Scholes.
LVG is an appalling man manager and that's been fairly obvious for a long time. Blaming the player for not being good enough after he's spent 250m is shocking.
LVG is an appalling man manager and that's been fairly obvious for a long time. Blaming the player for not being good enough after he's spent 250m is shocking.
Well less reason to feel sorry for LVG, he can now make a sh!t load of money exposing these rats when he releases a biography of his time at United.
Not saying i'm a fan of his tenure but it's pretty sh!tty briefing the press on what happens behind closed doors, yeah he fecked up but he's paying the price by losing his job. Snitching to the press and kicking someone when they are down is pathetic and the person should be rooted out and kicked out of the club.
Not saying i'm a fan of his tenure but it's pretty sh!tty briefing the press on what happens behind closed doors, yeah he fecked up but he's paying the price by losing his job. Snitching to the press and kicking someone when they are down is pathetic and the person should be rooted out and kicked out of the club.
Giggs can still retain the goodwill from the press and remain absolved of all responsibilities and failures that's the gain as far as he's concerned.
When you write up something like this you need a few red herrings to throw people off the scent of the source. Hence mention of Giggs, Rooney, Carrick. None of these are the source, I am convinced. But it is an important insight into what is wrong with United. And what will continue to be wrong with United. As @togg rightly points out, players playing shite as a protest means player power out of control. But whodunit?
The message starts with the 'heavy-handed' style mantra... Then starts pointing fingers. Bastian is a bastard. Who doesn't like Schweini? Then into the moaning section. '...a budget Holiday Inn was hired'. This leak source is close to a mollycoddled prIck. Continuing... ‘training at 8.30, sent to rooms for a couple hours rest, training after lunch, back for video meetings and tactics discussion, back to rooms, supper of toast and then bed at half ten ...' WTF is wrong with that? Then the email starts to name names.
"Captain Wayne Rooney and vice-captain Michael Carrick sought out Van Gaal..." - it is not coming from either of these players, and does these loyal club men a terrible disservice. 'The majority of the players would not open the emails..." Trackers etc. It is possibly someone who had the time and the resentment to wage a war against the manager, at least in his own head. Is it an unhappy goalkeeper? Also it speaks of divisions in the dressing room.
Memphis Depay, the £25m summer signing who was dropped from the FA Cup final squad, is regarded as being allowed to waste his talent due to Van Gaal’s mis-management. This person doesn't like Depay either. The stupid eggs story (which seems pointed towards Rashford?) smacks of bullying. Then the writer gets to the topic of DDG.
The Spaniard had separate issues with Frans Hoek, too..? Hmm. Angel Di Maria, poor thing, didn't do well. So who is it?
It's not Rashford. Not Martial. Not Depay. It's not Juan Mata. Not Shaw. Not TFM. Not Valencia. Not Lingard. Not Januzaj, I think.
It's never Herrera; not Varela. Not Darmian, or Smalling or Rojo. Not Blind. Not Pereira. Not Phil Jones. Not Love. Not Young. Not CBJ. Not Keane. Not Blackett. Not McNair. I think it might be a keeper. But not Johnstone, and it's not Romero.
MEN wrote: 'July was not jolly for Valdes. United's players have voiced their reservations about Louis van Gaal's training at Carrington this season but none as volubly as Valdes'. We all know about the falling out between LVG and Valdes. So he is a possibility, but it seems a bit too obvious. Although he is a wonderful keeper, I think a better bet is DDG, or perhaps one of his confidantes, without his consent.
All in all I think there will be an awful lot of people at Carrington unhappy with this stuff, even if there is a relatively small core of people who think its extremely clever and funny. Stamp it out ruthlessly, I say. SAF was always supportive of, and respectful of other managers. This bollox is not coming from his side, either (even if he was in cahoots with Mendes). It would earn my respect if Jose made his first action show that he won't tolerate this type of behaviour at the club. But the ones who we really need to hear from are the suits, starting with Woody.
The message starts with the 'heavy-handed' style mantra... Then starts pointing fingers. Bastian is a bastard. Who doesn't like Schweini? Then into the moaning section. '...a budget Holiday Inn was hired'. This leak source is close to a mollycoddled prIck. Continuing... ‘training at 8.30, sent to rooms for a couple hours rest, training after lunch, back for video meetings and tactics discussion, back to rooms, supper of toast and then bed at half ten ...' WTF is wrong with that? Then the email starts to name names.
"Captain Wayne Rooney and vice-captain Michael Carrick sought out Van Gaal..." - it is not coming from either of these players, and does these loyal club men a terrible disservice. 'The majority of the players would not open the emails..." Trackers etc. It is possibly someone who had the time and the resentment to wage a war against the manager, at least in his own head. Is it an unhappy goalkeeper? Also it speaks of divisions in the dressing room.
Memphis Depay, the £25m summer signing who was dropped from the FA Cup final squad, is regarded as being allowed to waste his talent due to Van Gaal’s mis-management. This person doesn't like Depay either. The stupid eggs story (which seems pointed towards Rashford?) smacks of bullying. Then the writer gets to the topic of DDG.
The Spaniard had separate issues with Frans Hoek, too..? Hmm. Angel Di Maria, poor thing, didn't do well. So who is it?
It's not Rashford. Not Martial. Not Depay. It's not Juan Mata. Not Shaw. Not TFM. Not Valencia. Not Lingard. Not Januzaj, I think.
It's never Herrera; not Varela. Not Darmian, or Smalling or Rojo. Not Blind. Not Pereira. Not Phil Jones. Not Love. Not Young. Not CBJ. Not Keane. Not Blackett. Not McNair. I think it might be a keeper. But not Johnstone, and it's not Romero.
MEN wrote: 'July was not jolly for Valdes. United's players have voiced their reservations about Louis van Gaal's training at Carrington this season but none as volubly as Valdes'. We all know about the falling out between LVG and Valdes. So he is a possibility, but it seems a bit too obvious. Although he is a wonderful keeper, I think a better bet is DDG, or perhaps one of his confidantes, without his consent.
All in all I think there will be an awful lot of people at Carrington unhappy with this stuff, even if there is a relatively small core of people who think its extremely clever and funny. Stamp it out ruthlessly, I say. SAF was always supportive of, and respectful of other managers. This bollox is not coming from his side, either (even if he was in cahoots with Mendes). It would earn my respect if Jose made his first action show that he won't tolerate this type of behaviour at the club. But the ones who we really need to hear from are the suits, starting with Woody.
What responsibilities and failures are those then? He's Assistant Manager.
Would Woodward's assistant (whoever that may be) be responsible for any mistakes Woodward makes? If you were assistant manager to someone would you be happy being held responsible for their poor performance?
I'm sure the players want to vent their frustrations to be fair and explain to the fan base some of the issues. At least they mainly waited until the manager was gone this time.
To be honest it's a relief reading this stuff as it confirms LvG was causing major issues and it's not just the players being shite.
To be honest it's a relief reading this stuff as it confirms LvG was causing major issues and it's not just the players being shite.
Most of the time he praised himself, when we win he says "I", "Me", "We" and when we lose "they", "the players". And the players played for themselves more than anything.
In The Guardian's version of events, one 'senior figure' at Old Trafford reckons we need to get rid of 90% of our players!
At what level does the term 'senior figure' start?
I mean it's all relative I suppose...could be the tea lady!
EDIT: sorry, 'tea person'
It's not Valdes, he's not even been part of the club this season. I think it's definitely a British-born player or staff member, hence the random snipes at the foreign signings and I think it's an experienced individual, as proven by the archaic Memphis should have caught the bus to the reserve game and the strange mention of a young player needing boiled eggs. Thirdly it's a leak that has all the hallmarks of the ones we saw under Moyes, so for me that leaves Rooney, Carrick, Giggs, Smalling and Young as the potential culprits. Don't think Carrick, Smalling or Young have the characters to do this, which leaves Giggs and Rooney IMO. I'd find it pretty funny if it was Giggs considering his pal Scholes once refused to even play a reserve game, much less actually turn up like Memphis.
If all of this is true, am ashamed I stood by him and hope for more time
That's gotta be Rooney.
Didn't he refuse to sign a contract until we told him our transfer plans and Fergie told him to get fecked.
Maybe Wayne should work on his own game first.
It's not a protest, players don't protest by playing shite, at that level the margin is thin and when the players lose confidence in their abilities they second thought everything and lose games. It's like in tennis when players aren't confident they can easily miss a simple volley because instead of just smashing it, they rethink during the movement, that's what happens most of the time.
I don't believe its Wayne Rooney. He seemed geniuinely warm to LVG in the last months. He played his heart out on the pitch. He doesn't have the conspiratiorial nature (even though his agent seems to be a be a bit of a c**t; so there is that possibility. Also it seems to be someone who enjoys a laugh at others expense, borderline bullying roughhouse stuff... mmm). I think Wayne sees himself as the leader of the team. Giggs is a strange one. If he did this, he is a total jerk. I refuse to believe it. He doesn't have the sense of humour.
I think there was more to SAF wanting to jettison Rooney than him just not being as good a player as he was. There's nothing humorous about it all to be honest, paints a pretty pathetic picture of the entire playing staff.
The point @togg was making was a general one. Think Hazard. Think Jose's face last year. Think Chelsea dressing room. Don't underestimate the human capacity for deviousness, and the Lord of the Flies weird isolated group dynamics. These leaks show the same infection (on a much lesser scale) at Carrington.
If these reports are true then you have to be disappointed in the players' attitudes. If LVG has gone to the trouble of putting together an analysis of your performance then the least you can do is fecking read the thing in the privacy of your own home.
OMG stop being dramaqueen4eva
I suppose it depends of how it is presented. If it reads like his press conferences then I would be inclined to skip it occasionally!
I'm sure the players are used to doing video analysis after a game it's probably the nature of the feedback LvG was giving.
The man's a control freak and unlike Fergie hes never learnt that you have to be a mentor/father figure to the players and not just give robotic instructions.
At least now we know where all his notes end up!
Hazard is special, never use him as an example, it would be like using Ribery. In our case it has been obvious that the players never really stopped playing, they were just sometimes really bad, completely devoided of confidence and spontaneity.
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yeah that's true....he spent the whole match writing emails.....Possibly, although in the case of Moyes, near the end, I really did feel the players were not playing to their full potential, confidence or not.
If I was being paid the kind of money they are on I would read the thing even if it said "all work and no play makes Louis a dull boy" 500 times. Disgraceful attitude when you consider that this is a coach that has been so successful and managed the biggest teams in the world, such arrogance to think that you cannot learn from him.
Well, I reckon they did want to learn from him at first, but this appetite was slowly eroded away over the course of time as things on the pitch got more dull and less creative. Not saying it isn't disrespectful, but I can see how it happened.
Doesn't matter how much your paid, if your boss is a dick you're not going to be keen to listen to him.
Usually this feedback is done through the coaches who do it in a respectful fashion and not treat them like children. The authoritarian approach doesn't work in any environment involving proffesionals, Fergie recognised that to much success.
The idea that because players earn a lot they should be devoid of any emotion is idiotic.
That's a real exaggeration. In general, LVG has praised his players a lot. And as all disciplinarians with a strong personality, he also calls them out when they're found wanting. But we often draw up pantomime villain images in our head of such personalities, as if they're incapable of praising other human beings.
For example, here is LVG praising his players after a win over Wolfsburg. Odd how he actually says one should compliment Mike for his improvement.
There's plenty more, I'm sure.
And of course everyone sort of fends for themselves when things go tits up. But I haven't seen that much of it from LVG to justify the tagline you give him. He said he needs more players with pace and the ability to dribble. That's been obvious to us for ages so I'm not sure it's so offensive.
If you really want to see players' being thrown under the bus by the manager, see Jose at Chelsea. He's the most self-serving manager I've ever seen by a country mile.
As as for the last bit, the players could have played for "themselves" under Moyes as well, but it's evident that the spirit in the camp has been more under control and far better under LVG than it was under Moyes at United, or Mourinho at Chelsea.
I don't blame the players. They have given it their all and I've never thought any of them were giving less than 100%. It falls to the manager to manage them in a way that enables him to get the best out of them. LVG has failed spectacularly at this side of things.
What is disgraceful is that LVG who is paid millions, has spent the last 16 years not understanding that you don't treat professional players and seasoned players like youth players, that's his downfall. He never tried to understand and fix his own problems, he is great with very young players but pretty bad with the rest.
Basically what happens with him is that he tries to change what makes a "veteran" player succesful, when that player tries to do what Van gaal told him, the player generally fails which is normal since it's not his natural game, then Van gaal criticizes the player infront of the group, the player doesn't really understand why he is treated like that since he isn't a robot, the player tries again and fails, lose confidence and hates Van gaal's guts.
Good post.
Excellent points. It's getting very tedious when everyone starts jumping around and crucifying LvG. He has had a lot of bad moments but you can't drag a man so low.
Obviously he isn't going to ignore his players all the time, the problem is that, he will criticize them at every opportunity in private and often in public. LVG is a good coach and our young players have been lucky to be coached by him but he is terrible when it comes to the management, I have been critical of the players that he managed in the past some of them aren't the easiest people to work with but LVG is also responsible for what happened to him in almost every clubs.
So my stance on all that is that LVG is bad at managing players, he is a very good coach but he lacks empathy, when it comes to football.
The e-mail part seems a little too detailed to be invented, so I'm inclined to believe that's somewhere close to the truth. But what does this say about the players who reacted in such a manner?
LVG is a maniac for bombarding them with 20 page e-mails highlighting their flaws? Fair enough - I doubt that's what he was doing, but let's say it came across that way to them. What do you do about it?
An adult would address the problem - take it up with LVG. He wouldn't come up with a clever way to pretend he'd read these pesky communications. As others have said, taken at face value these revelations don't flatter our players - regardless of how one feels about LVG. The e-mail business, taken at face value, paints the picture of a bunch of kids who were engaging in a bit of civil disobedience - an act which can't possibly be called professional or productive.
LVG is a maniac for bombarding them with 20 page e-mails highlighting their flaws? Fair enough - I doubt that's what he was doing, but let's say it came across that way to them. What do you do about it?
An adult would address the problem - take it up with LVG. He wouldn't come up with a clever way to pretend he'd read these pesky communications. As others have said, taken at face value these revelations don't flatter our players - regardless of how one feels about LVG. The e-mail business, taken at face value, paints the picture of a bunch of kids who were engaging in a bit of civil disobedience - an act which can't possibly be called professional or productive.
If it's true, it happened after the players told him that his constant criticisms were damaging the team confidence and moral. And on that part the problem could be that like Klose admitted, our players were not able to see on the field what LVG was asking them on the videos.
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Well it's not the first time it has happened. Bayern players at one stage came up with their own tactics because LvG seemed to have lost it. Despite them having even a worse version of all that before him with Klinsmann.He's a guy who has won around 20 trophies at various big clubs. He obviously doesn't "criticize them all the time". And neither does he "just send them emails". You sound as eager to make this sound a one sided issue as the guy who wrote that article.
"I'm not sure the players understood his emails"
But I suppose LVG is the raging nutjob our players/Giggs has to endure, is the narrative the story has gone for, and the likes of you will lap it up nice and proper.
Usually, there's mistakes on both sides that leads to a lack of success rather than just the one. This sounds like one laying all the blame on the other's table.
If only a couple of players do this and they are not called Messi, Ronaldo or Neymar who might be worth over keeping any manager, but the manager has the rest of the dressing room behind him, then you can get rid off a couple of players. But if you lose half of the dressing room, then always the manager needs to leave, especially someone who hasn't been successful at your club anyway and has a history of doing such stuff.
His robot like treatment already showed during the Di Maria fiasco where he didn't seem to understand that different players need a different management approach, and that despite his precious talk about regarding players as human beings and all that. Often he talks one think but ends up doing the opposite.
Btw I have backed LvG several times and no need for you to judge me by claiming I will lap everything up. But I don't need to back him when there is nothing to back imo.
You never have a squad without so-called snakes. We never had them in SAF time as things were going well. Don't kid yourself that some of them wouldn't have run to the press if things had gone tits up.
Ok, I understand. But first the article states that voicing the concerns face to face was not a good solution either for the players. So what is good enough for them to not feel insulted but still at least listen to the staff's advice?