Louis van Gaal in an interview said the best time to score is during the transition from defence to attack, it's his third phase of play, he's been training the team on it but he has himself admitted we need to improve that part of our game.
His style is to win the ball back and then hit a fast counter while the opposition are disorganised, this is the third phase of play. However when the opposition assume their defensive organisation then he reverts to the possession game to attempt to disorganise their defence. The problem is that during the counter, we have a very short window to execute, if one person slows things down then the opportunity has gone and that happens to us a lot.
The man built teams that played really good football for periods of their season, but we've only done this for a few games in his time here, he's been unsuccessful so far in getting us to do what he wants consistently but he is working towards it and it's what you describe. That fast counter is very important to him but if we hesitate and the opposition get organised defensively then it is no longer on, at this point he reverts to the patient game.
The counter doesn't just happen by the manager telling the players to do it, they have to train it because a little hesitation and the opposition are back in their defensive shape, it takes a lot of training and understanding between the players before it can be done consistently. Hopefully as the season progresses we improve our play in this phase of attack because it will look good but it also requires the opposition to come at us more so it won't always be possible.
Even when we don't get too many opportunities in a game to do it and so we play our patient possession game in the fourth phase of attack (when the opposition have their defensive shape) we need to do much better in disorganising them and creating chances, Louis van Gaal has already said this so hopefully we'll see improvements.
