time has proved you wrong though. Zaha barely had an opportunity at United but has become a strong premier league player. Rafael is still impressing for Lyon and loved the club too. Keane was young but with the right coaching he'd be more reliable than Rojo and Jones for example.
People mention MK Dons but that was a drop in the ocean. No players bar De Gea were excellent in Van Gaals team and it's still the worst football I've seen served up by United teams. The Manager was the common denominator and I've no idea why we appointed him given his style
Excuse me, the likes of Martial, Rashford, Lingard, Blind, Smalling and Carrick were obviously horrible under Van Gaal like you said.
Even Fellaini looked good under Van Gaal as well as the injury prone Schweisteiger who formed a good partnership with Schneiderlin in the heart of our midfield which culminated in our good runs that got us to the top of league table until injury struck him before December. That was when we started having problem because Herrera couldn't form an adequate partnership with Schneiderlin in the midfield like Schweisteiger did before his injury. Herrera continued to look rubbish in a possession based midfield setup despite being a Basque player until Carrick came to the rescue after his injury lay off. The fact is Van Gaal got the best out of the average squad he had under him.
Zaha plays as a SS nowadays for a counter attacking Crystal palace team which is built around him and that's something he couldn't have had here. As a matter of fact, I still don't see him working out on the wing because he doesn't have the close control to navigate through opposition's defenders, especially while he was utilised in a possession based style. Maybe he could have worked out as a wing forward for us (regardless of his terrible finishing) however, we didn't have a creative midfielder like Pogba or de bruyne who could have constantly released him in acres of space and save him the hassle of having to combat defenders most of the time neither were the team operating a counter attacking set up which could have given him much more space to operate whenever the team would counter. Whichever ways, same happened to Depay who is of similar player and equally doing well at Lyon. Both needed game times to refine their games anyway.
As for Rafael, how many games did he play for us? Was he ever available? I have no problem with Van Gaal getting rid of him because the physio room was more of his friend while he was here. He wasn't always available.
Keane was a young player who needed game times also and there was no way he would have got enough if he had stayed.