We all watched the game, we saw what happened.
He shouldn't be defending that shit that was served up on Sunday.
He is not defending it, he is just giving Big Sam an answer to his question why people don't call Manchester United a long-ball team. LVG has given him his answer because we don't play the long ball as much as West Ham and more than half of the PL.
It is not because you play a long ball at the end of a game when 1-0 down that you are a long ball team...
Every team plays long balls but United not as many as people are claiming and he is right about it with his stats. We have more ball possession than most and you don't get that with just playing long balls even the smallest dumbest child can understand that. We play more passes than most teams and hence some of them will be long balls forwards. But people look at the last 10 minutes and counted a big number of long balls and boom we are a long ball team, nonsense. Percentage wise we still play far more short passes forward so how on earth could we be a long ball team, it is just a wrong conclusion made by many out of frustration with the effectiveness our game plan.
Our problem is not the amount of long balls/total passes, it is the amount of chances created/ball possession and also the amount of goals scored/chances created, both combined goals scored/ball possession is ridiculous at the moment. That criticism would have been justified, we are a team having huge amounts of the ball and result to do absolutely nothing with it but not calling us a long ball team. Yes we play long balls, so does Chelsea, City and any other team and it is a logic thing to do in the 80th minute when everything else has been failing for the rest of the game. If we were a long ball team, we would play Fellaini from the start and use that tactic from the last 10 minutes from the start till the end.
LVG is right about this, I don't know if it was advisable to come out with it like that in a press conference but that is LVG for you. In fact I don't mind, I think people who just come out and say x or y is the truth because I have seen it in the game and my eyes don't lie are irrational people whom it is pointless to discuss with in rational manner. If I say x or y and somebody says I don't agree with that because I have these factual statistics that prove your point of view wrong than I look at the facts and if that person is right than I adjust my point of view. That is the normal way discussions about things that can be backed up with facts should be handled. Not waving away the facts as jokes that are wrong and biased and not as good as my own eyes before even giving them a decent look. Ofcourse the stats need to be correct and the conclusions you take from them need to be correct aswell and if they aren't you can build up your counter argumentation around that. But stats if they are well made are more truthfull and less biased than the opinions of frustrated muppet fans and managers. So Van Gaal has a point backing up his argumentation with stats as it makes it more credible for rational people unfortunately football is full off irrational people whose opinion changes faster that the direction of the wind and half of the time lack the intelligence to even decently understand football facts and the conclusions you can make of them or even the idea of proper rational argumention in general.
In that respect Van Gaal might have better played along and kept silent as nothing he does will please the muppets at this moment and opposition don't want to settle discussions in a normal manner, they just wanna bring us down and make as much fun of it as possible in the process.