Wayne Rooney says misfiring Manchester United should follow the example of record-chasing Jamie Vardy in their summit meeting with surprise Premier League leaders Leicester on Saturday.
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Key Player: Jamie Vardy – The Englishman will be gunning for Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record and what a game it could be to do it in.
Van Nistelrooy set the 10-match record while at the Red Devils in 2003 and Vardy equalled it with the opener in last week’s 3-0 win at Newcastle which sent Leicester top. “We didn’t give away many chances and also the penalty, but I expect better than today of our positional game”, the former Bayern Munich and Barcelona manager added. He scored and provoked a penalty and now he is scoring 10 games in a row.
But Seedorf, who played under his compatriot at Ajax, believes it is unfair to complain about Van Gaal’s philosophy as the former Barcelona boss has won trophies with every club he has managed. “It’s not so easy to do that”.
United lost 5-3 on its last visit to the King Power Stadium, when Jamie Vardy was one of the scorers. I remember how that felt and it’s hard to come back from or even think about the professional game. One concern that Spurs backers might have is that they have played on Thursday in Azerbaijan (7 hour flight from London) so we may see some jet lag from players after enduring a long round trip mid-week. Despite being second in the Premier League after 13 matches, some United fans are unhappy with the style of football being played under Van Gaal.
“My players are disappointed because we had the feeling we could win”, Van Gaal said. Vardy’s opener You can imagine that we have prepared [to stop] that because that is Leicester’s quality. Van Gaal insists the academy graduate still has a future at the club.
“Despite our dominance we didn’t create so many chances”.
From seventh place to second and now, despite Wednesday’s goalless draw, they are within reach of the knockout stages of the Champions League.
“He was already last season a very nasty player for us”.
Captain Vincent Kompany has been badly missed and faces another fortnight out with a calf problem, while David Silva and Samir Nasri are also sidelined and goalkeeper Joe Hart was injured in the midweek Champions League loss at Juventus.
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United, who are third in the league, welcomed midfielder Michael Carrick back into the side on Saturday after he returned from an ankle injury suffered in England’s 2-0 friendly loss to Spain. “That is hard to cope with because we could have been first in the league and now we are not”, he said.
