Louis Van Gaal - Press Conference vs Burnley - Feb 10th
- Thread starter RedMachine03
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Heh. That too!
Marco Pierre White used it recently in an interview.
"I'm not about fluff"
Broke my balls laughing
Media are just feeding off the ignorant as per usual. LVG a little naive but what he says is not wrong. Journo's clearly delighted the bollocks they have been writing all week has got some kind of reaction. I can see why Fergie was like he was with the media.
I'm surprised it took this long for a "meltdown". He's always had running battles with the press. Glad to see a bit of fire in his belly tbh. Has seemed strangely passive up until now.
Nothing wrong with this, people have been using the long ball comment for a while. A big part of his philosophy is the switch of play and he has simply stated switching play is used to keep ball possession but since the ball travels more than 25m it is considered a long ball but it is diagonal (Guardiola uses this) and part of keeping ball possession.
He is using this to simply tell the media to stop calling us a long ball team, it's been happening before Sam's comment. He also said it is true things didn't work and then he bought Fellaini on and played more forward long balls but that got the goal and so he thinks was a good decision by him.
The problem is the media have no desire to report truth and being critical of United will sell papers, he can't win with them, the best thing he can do is give the journalists that write stupid things one word answers and then ask them questions instead, he should say "you also think we are a long ball team? what do you think is a long ball team?", they will say something like knocking the ball up top and then he can shame them, show them the stats, tell them they need to go specsavers.
He is using this to simply tell the media to stop calling us a long ball team, it's been happening before Sam's comment. He also said it is true things didn't work and then he bought Fellaini on and played more forward long balls but that got the goal and so he thinks was a good decision by him.
The problem is the media have no desire to report truth and being critical of United will sell papers, he can't win with them, the best thing he can do is give the journalists that write stupid things one word answers and then ask them questions instead, he should say "you also think we are a long ball team? what do you think is a long ball team?", they will say something like knocking the ball up top and then he can shame them, show them the stats, tell them they need to go specsavers.
Come On! Show a little bit of compassion.
Sam did his talking on the pitch alas; would that Van Gaal favoured this sort of instinctive and forceful out on the grass too, and not only when his ego feels a touch bruised.
See I think rather than being rattled like Rafa was, he will have relished being smug and explaining the situation like he did today. It's not like it's a new thing for him to act like this in a press conference. It's not like he's a nervous young manager acting out of sorts. He's beed doing this for years.
The trouble is that a lot of our fans don't like him, so they can't get behind that sort of arrogance and two fingers to the media. They'd actually like to paint a negative narrative to it.
It's just the sort of argument Ferguson used to love, he'd get a beetroot face and ban a couple of journalists and all our fans would say it's classic Fergie keeping control. Well here's Van Gaal, getting the hard stats out like most people on here do and saying "print what you like but you're wrong and here it is in writing".
I'd say Keegan 'losing it on telly' was an indication as to his state of mind. Some of his decisions behind the scenes would, no doubt, have been as odd. Same goes for Benitez. Him ranting on set showed what he was feeling/acting like off set.
They may still have lost anyway, and the rant alone didn't turn wins into defeats and draws, but they symbolised the manager struggling to deal with it all. Obviously all that the rant does is increase the pressure.
Or maybe some of the fans don't agree that the media or Big Sam was entirely wrong...
No no no. NO. JUST NO. Let's worry about what opposition fans will think of it, what media will think of it and how it is same as Rafa moment even before future results are out in this case. That's where the fun lies.
Actually, he did it in a post-match interview in a small room near the pitch. Easy mistake to make, I suppose.
40% possession at home and scoring from a set peice which was a long ball into the box. Right on.
Yep.
He's not losing it lads, calm down. This is vintage LVG, he always goes out of his way to prove the media wrong, he has always been like this,so, forget it as a Benitez moment or anything of such, of course, it's pointless for him to do what he did, but this is typical Van Gaal, move on.
Not to mention Fergie periodically banning individual journalists, or refusing to talk to the press altogether.
In the current climate, that would be greeted by a hordes of people on here saying he's "lost it completely" or "done a Rafa"
Well I did mention that but yes that too
Yeah, it he exact same as Rafas meltdown. 
Despite all evidence for this game and the season to date suggesting otherwise. We may play more long balls than we had done under Fergie but that doesn't make us a long ball team. As LVG correctly points out long ball football suggests lumping it up to our forwards which West Ham tried to do more frequently than us. Switching the play, which we do regularly, does not constitute long ball football.
Do we switch the play a lot or do I regularly see Rojo Jones etc playing long balls forward, yes they may be directed out wide but we are still playing far too many long balls IMO.
Big Sam broke our manager.
To the "if not LVG, then who?" thread!
To the "if not LVG, then who?" thread!
Oh yeah. So when I say "not to mention" I actually mean, "just to agree with"...Well I did mention that but yes that too
Yes we do switch the play a lot, especially when Rooney plays in central midfield, we just don't work it fast enough. West Ham played a higher percentage of what is deemed long ball football than we did, that's undisputable.
I always think it's a bit unfair to use Fergie as a stick to beat people with in other managers defence. Fergie did earn a degree of respect (or the right to act a tit about something tedious for a lack of better words!) Moyes and LVG haven't really earned that in their time at United so naturally people will take the piss of them if they say or do something stupid i.e. Moyes we aspire to be like City's line which I bet, whilst I doubt Fergie would ever say it, if it was said by a manager with more of a standing it wouldn't of got much of a reaction.
It's looking at something with hindsight, Fergie has a remarkable career and made the club what it is today so naturally that comes with some biased in looking back. LVG has so far been unconvincing to a lot of people and therefore when he does make a comment they think is stupid people will take the piss. I don't think anyones going to over the top either, a lot of this thread is just people laughing or saying he looks a bit stupid. Maybe things can get lose in translation when it's written rather than spoken but from what I see a lot of people are just having a bit of a laugh. It seems people are getting more annoyed in the defence of him if anything.
Think Rooney.
Why us everyone having a meltdown over what he did? I know we all want Fergie back but we can't expect LvG to be Fergie! The man has his own style and let him get on with it.
We all know what happened when we tried to get someone who's not Fergie to manage like Fergie(atleast make a pathetic attempt at it).
We all know what happened when we tried to get someone who's not Fergie to manage like Fergie(atleast make a pathetic attempt at it).
I'm not arguing that we played more long balls than Westham and niether did Big Sam for that matter. However we play far too many long balls for a United team IMO. Its not just switching the play too, its balls being played up to the forwards too 49.9% of our long balls were forwards.
I don't see any relevance to what Benitez did, other than they both brought a piece of paper to the press conference. LvG was presenting official stats from the match, even though some of it was stretching a bit, while everything Benitez said was pure conjecture. Whatever reason he had for doing so, only he himself will know, but maybe now other managers will think twice before labeling us a long ball team again? First time this happens it may arguably be embarrassing for LvG but if someone accuses us again then they will look stupid.
So you missed that stat that said 49.9% of our long balls were to the forwards, yes just switching the play then... 49.9% is too fecking many.
And most of them came in the closing 15-20 minutes, when we did play long ball football. Still doesn't mean it's our usual style this season. It wasn't even our usual style in that particular game!
Not a meltdown, but looked like a tit, he shouldn't even have regarded Allardyce's words, especially as it doesn't even seem like the fat one said it with malice, but more banter.
At least when Fergie did it, he always looked 100% in control and had a pedigree to back him up
At least when Fergie did it, he always looked 100% in control and had a pedigree to back him up
As a statistician said on BBC Fivelive only last week, possession stats are amongst the most inappropriately cited in thee sport. West Ham could, and probably should have been comfortably in front long before we enabled the Fellaini Emergencies Device. JMO of course.
What does it matter how their goal came about, the reason that this tory has legs is because United are indeed employing the long ball to an uncharacteristic degree.
Louis either shouldn't have responded to the barb in the first place, or simply stated that the tactic had salvaged a point and left it at that. Van Gaal would have had no difficulty in stonewalling any follow-ups after all. Both this season and last, Allardyce has come across like a buffoon with these "I'm better than you" pronouncements.
Amazed people think this is a sign of Van Gaal losing it.
He's an arrogant, smug guy who. He has this "know it all" side of him which also comes across when he treats journos like children regarding tactics. Van Gaal could never take a dig about playing style from Sam fecking Allardyce.
The way he has handed everyone a copy of the stats, their analysis and asked them to send Big Sam a copy too to understand it is a big feck you to everyone. I'm glad he didnt joke it off and rather put the twat in his place.
He's an arrogant, smug guy who. He has this "know it all" side of him which also comes across when he treats journos like children regarding tactics. Van Gaal could never take a dig about playing style from Sam fecking Allardyce.
The way he has handed everyone a copy of the stats, their analysis and asked them to send Big Sam a copy too to understand it is a big feck you to everyone. I'm glad he didnt joke it off and rather put the twat in his place.
And paying Rooney Messi like wages to play in there doing an average job embodies how our club is now run.
haha forwards my bad
Read it again.
Yes that was the first time I'd seen us resort to these tactics this season. Something which Moyes was crucified for doing last season. Bringing on Fellaini and getting us to go long.
So you missed the part in your previous post where you said "so do we switch the play a lot"