If he stays because of 4th place and an FA Cup win it will be a travesty and next year will be an even worse nightmare than this season has been IMHO. I never thought I'd struggle to be excited about watching Manchester United on match day.
For me, there really are NO plus points:
Has "LvG" achieved anything anyway?
Even if United get 4th I think it'll be in spite of LvG and his non-existent philosophy not because of him. He won't have won us 4th place or "tactically" beaten City to 4th – they screwed it up and we're merely limping over the line thanks to them, if indeed we do which remains to be seen. I personally think he knows he's off either way and doesn't care about CL next season, he only wants the FA cup for his CV – but that's for another thread.
Low scoring (boring) philosophy
Look at the top 4 GD (all 4 teams on around 30 points currently) … we're on fecking 13!!! Think about that for a second, in 36 matches we have only managed a balance of around one goal every 3 games more than our opposition (fallen from an average of 40-50 in the last 22 odd seasons of SAF reign and don't say that's not relevant either). Very seldom does GD lie looking at the final standings year-on-year, barring one or two anomalies it tends to be quite an accurate indication of final placement historically (especially in the top half of the table) and is also normally a nod towards the type of football played to get there. With a GD of 13 we have no real right to expect CL Football next season. And does anyone want to see us struggling against the likes of Eindhoven under him again anyway (especially after we just paid them a fortune for their star player)?
Why let LvG be involved in purchases for our future if we know he's off at the end of next year?
We know the sort of football that he wants to play. It's the one that 99.9% of the fans complain about week-in week-out! So why keep him on for another year and more importantly, as he's off at the end of next season anyway, why let him dictate purchases if he's betraying our playing DNA and we will be reverting to type once he's off? I don't understand why any more (sometimes ridiculous amounts of) money should be spent on taking "proven" quality footballers and allowing him to turn them into robots, complaining about them like some strict out-of-touch public school headmaster would his young charges, and then throwing everything out of the window and playing Fellaini in their place anyway? Not sure too many more agents will want their players coming to United while he's still here anyway, after seeing the stock of the likes of Scheiderlin, Memphis and Herrera et.al. fall so far.
Slow (boring) philosophy
We're all screaming out for Woody to buy some super-fast players to speed up our style of attack but what's the point if Louie will insist on the new ones playing such a slow sideways and backwards possession-stat-based build-up game (most importantly IMHO) with virtually no forward movement from players off the ball. He's imprinted his mind-numbing "possession at all costs" style of static football on our players and changed us from an historically renowned speedy, multi-facetted attacking team to the safe, boring, slow build-up play we see every week. I'm fed up of having to bear Sourness, Carragher, and co pointing out, often correctly (which makes it worse), the same deficiencies week after week and then hearing LvG bragging about the possession stats in post match pressers as if they are a badge of honour.
Shooting down the philosophy continued)
We used to have around 20 shots at goal per game, now we're lucky to have one per half. It's so obvious to me, more shots on goal equals more chances to score! It's no co-incidence that our reputation for winning penalties and getting OGs came during a stage when we spent as much time as possible with the ball in the opposition box, along with the speed with which we got it there and knocked it around. With this style of play, even speculative shots cause panic and mistakes amongst opposition defences. Yes they don't always (or even often) pay off, but it's not far short of what Leicester, Spurs, and Liverpool under Klopp have modelled themselves on with far less talented squads.
At a time when the rest of Europe is being ruled by a fast moving counter-attacking forward style of play incorporating midfields that can read the game and move off the ball to join attacks and mobile defenders with a real appetite to win the ball back at all costs - we've abandoned that style of play for some rigid, snooze-fest that looks like it was planned on paper 3 weeks beforehand. A transparently, telegraphed "philosophy" that sells our players, our fans and our history short. FFS, even FC Midgitland sussed us out!
If LvG is still here next season it can only mean that they are serious about Giggs succeeding him, and that folks, might just be worse!
//