The Van Gaal Effect.

Louis Van Gaal, some may say, has already transformed Manchester United from the ruin they were last season to a Manchester United team of old. He has returned discipline; he has signed the players that Moyes struggled to sign and has integrated his easy-on-the-eye, attacking 3-5-2 system. All of this has been reflected in comprehensive preseason victories.

Last season was torturous for Manchester United fans they saw their team lose to Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton both home and away; the first time in the clubs history that all of their three Northwest rivals beat them both home and away. This Record was one of many broken last season in David Moyes’ calamitous stint as Manchester United manager and they weren’t the kind of records that you would want to be making. Just ten months into Moyes’ miserable reign and he was sacked and the speculation began as to who would be trusted to commandeer the Manchester United Revolution.

After 27 days of ongoing speculation the Manchester United board announced that they had appointed the man they believed could turn the club around in the short term as well as being a long term appointment. That man was Louis Van Gaal (who was managing the Netherlands at the time) and they had agreed for him to take over the reins officially after he completed his world cup campaign.

Just three hours subsequent to the customary new manager press conference, Ed Woodward, Vice- Chairman of Manchester United, described it that “his [Van Gaal’s] aura has already banished last season’s memories”.

Three hours. And Van Gaal had already begun to take effect.

In the past people have heavily criticised Van Gaal’s radical training methods claiming them to be daunting and overly scrutinising. But it seems that both the coaches and players have accepted his techniques with open arms; despite the installation of a £500,000 HD camera system used to analyse the player’s every move and any drop in concentration or increase in fatigue. In recent interviews, Van Gaal revealed that he had inherited a broken and unbalanced side, he also revealed how he was unhappy at some player’s fitness levels and also revealed that nothing but the best is good enough from his players; anything less is punished and criticised. But it seems that despite the radical methods, they accept that it is for their benefit and will help them improve and evolve into better players.

Under Van Gaal, so far, Manchester United have competed in preseason friendlies against high quality competition; LA Galaxy, Roma, Inter and most recently Real Madrid winning all of them including a very impressive 7-0 victory over LA Galaxy, a game which new midfield maestro Ander Herrera shone. In all of these games Van Gaal made use of every single player in his current squad seeing who does and who doesn’t fit into his 3-5-2/5-3-2 formation, the formation used by Van Gaal during his successful world cup run with the Netherlands.

So far this transfer window Manchester United have made two acquisitions who will prove to be key to aid the transition from a typical 4-at-the-back formation to a more modern 3-at-the-back formation: Ander Herrera and Luke Shaw. After recruiting his two transfer priorities Van Gaal has expressed his content at the quality and quantity in his squad and won’t sign players for the sake of it. But after the departures of defensive duo Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic it leaves Van Gaal with a lack of first team quality centre backs. Arsenal defender, Thomas Vermaelen is rumoured to be his No.1 target and should he arrive at Old Trafford, it would likely be the only further arrival.

So after the despair of last season, Manchester United fans will be hoping for season to remember and so far they have every reason to hope for that and here are three reasons why:

Manchester United seem to be back to their goal-scoring best, so far under van Gaal, averaging 3.3 goals per game (I know it’s only been a few games but all against premier league standard opposition) compared to Moyes’ average of 1.7 goals per game.

After the success at the World Cup, the 3-5-2 formation will be hoping for similar success in the world’s top leagues. At the world cup it was most notably used by Netherlands, Mexico and Costa Rica all of whom overachieved in many aspects and all reached the Knockouts stage. Combined they conceded a total of 9 goals in 16 games (0.6 goals per game) and scoring 25 goals in the same amount of games (1.6 goals per game). Similarly after the success of the 4-2-3-1 formation in the 2010 world cup, it was used by Manchester United who went on to win the league title. After the success of the 3-5-2 formation at the 2014 world cup it is now being used at Manchester United. Manchester United fans will be hoping for something similar to 2010/11.

Another important reason for Manchester United fans to be excited is that they now have a player, in Ander Herrera, who makes the team tick over and a player that never seems to run out of energy. If you look at the top five teams from last season’s premier league you find that each of the teams possessed a player that never ran out of energy, that ticks the team over and the type of player that other people feed off:

Manchester City – Yaya Toure

Liverpool – Jordan Henderson

Chelsea – Nemanja Matic

Arsenal – Mathieu Flamini

Everton – James McCarthy

In the modern game players like this are essential to a team’s success, they are the type of player that sets the ball rolling with his vision and the type of player that poses useful in both boxes. Last season under Moyes, this type of player is a player Moyes lacked. In many respects you could class him unfortunate that his £27million signing, Marouane Fellaini, performances were sub-standard and didn’t meet the criteria as listed above but the prime reason for this was that David Moyes didn’t deploy Fellaini with enough freedom, he restricted his movement and stopped Marouane from playing his natural game. For me, this is one of the main reasons that Moyes ultimately failed in his quest to emulate the feats achieved of the great managers gone before him at Manchester United. But thankfully for fans, Louis Van Gaal has identified this void in the Manchester united squad and recruited the player necessary to make the Manchester United team complete: Ander Herrera. Herrera has already proven to Manchester United fans and most importantly Louis Van Gaal that he is the right man to become the heartbeat of the new and rejuvenated united side. In his impressive display against LA Galaxy he recorded three assists, showed dynamism, seemed to possess a never-ending energy and was of use in both boxes.

With Herrera Manchester United are now complete.

By @joelymo444