Should have allowed him to complete his rebuild. We were slowly getting into a plan but lacked the players for the execution of it.
It was right towards the end of the second season that I felt that the team was playing the way that Van Gaal wanted. I think it was Giggs and Rooney who had said this as well saying that the team had started to understand his complex tactics and were playing towards it more routinely - but by then for alot of fans (not me) the damage had been done, especially since the top 4 had not be achieved.
The problem with him though for me was that he was tactically excellent but he has a history of making poor transfers at alot of his past clubs. Giggs and Rooney call him the most tactical intelligent manager they have ever worked under - highligting him as a big reason they want to get in to management and just from having him here - I still see imprints of his tactics around the club possibly on ex players, coaches like Nicky Butt Or Michael Carrick, especially when you see the 352, the left footed LCB or things like this as said by Michael Carrick :
Carrick wrote in his book, serialised by the Times, about the spell when he felt progress in the post-Fergie era: ''Louis van Gaal taught me another way of football, especially how to set up the team defensively, how to squeeze the pitch and suffocate a team. He went into so much detail and was so particular that we were difficult to play against when we got it right.
''The period when it looked like we were making strong progress was in March-April 2015.
We played Spurs, Liverpool and City and beat them all comfortably. When we went to Anfield, Brendan Rodgers had Liverpool playing a box in midfield, with Adam Lallana and Philippe Coutinho coming in off the sides.
''To combat that, Louis told me to play midfield when we got the ball and centre half when we didn’t, dropping between Chris Smalling and Phil Jones so we’d always have this overload. It allowed one of them to push all the way in on their side and I just dropped a little deeper, which saved me from running from one side to the other. I moved up and back instead of across the pitch."
''We tried it in a practice match at Carrington against Giggsy’s side.
Giggsy always took the opposition the day before the game, 11 v 11, and we were all over the place. Giggsy’s players kept getting through. I remember saying to Chris and Phil, 'Oh, we’re getting pulled all over the place here.'
Louis walked past me with a smile on his face, going, 'I’ve made it easy for you tomorrow!' 'What do you mean?' 'I’ve made it easy. Look, Chris there, Phil there. You don’t have to do anything. You have them all around you. Just read it.'
''Louis showed me my position between them, creating the overload, and supposedly blocking out the space that Liverpool could use. In the end, it was the best performance I’ve seen from us at Anfield by a mile. All of Louis’s details stayed in my mind, like knowing when to drop back, and, yes, it worked. This was Louis at his best. Juan Mata won the game with an incredible scissor-kick.''
- Michael Carrick
OP is disappointing.