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Pressure mounts on Van Gaal
Since taking charge of United, Van Gaal has preached the exact opposite approach – he is obsessed with dominating possession, and therefore his players are astonishingly conservative with their use of the ball.
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But, realistically, the key decision is Van Gaal’s overall gameplan: if United sit back, counterattack and triumph like Van Gaal did regularly with Holland, it could be a season-changing game.
“It is not always the club that has to fire or sack me”, he said. Sometimes I do it by myself, but I am the one who wants to speak first with the board of Manchester United and with my members of staff or with my players and not with you.
Sacked Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho and Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola, who is leaving his job in the summer, have been mooted as potential successors to Van Gaal.
Michael Carrick said victory against Chelsea could have a huge impact on United, who are now sixth in the table, nine points behind leaders Leicester but just three behind fourth-placed Tottenham.
Cameron had been expected to sit out with a hamstring strain but he returned to play a key role in central midfield, with the task of keeping the visitors quiet.
When asked if he was the man to help United rediscover their form, he said: “It’s more hard because I’m also a part of the four matches that we have lost. But I think so”.
Louis van Gaal insists he can deal with the scrutiny he will come under following his latest defeat as Manchester United manager.
He does admit that working under Van Gaal was a “different learning process”, because he was “the complete opposite of me”.
It was a hapless first-half performance and Van Gaal questioned why his players “don’t dare to play football”.
GEOFF Cameron says making life hard for Manchester United was the key to making it look so easy for Stoke City. “We have to cope with that and look for the solution”. This is also their eighth consecutive match without a win in all competitions, achieving just 3 draws and 5 hard losses.
The Dutchman had the support of the board in the build-up to the game in Staffordshire, but he acknowledged after the final whistle that there was a “new situation” now that he had overseen four straight defeats and also discussed the possibility of resigning.
“Maybe that’s the reason he didn’t start the game”.
“And in the second half, in half time, I have said that to my players, we had nothing to lose and then you can cope better with that and that you have seen in the second half that it was not good enough”, he added. A plodding team have managed 14 goals in 16 matches and it can not be written off as a blip when, going back to April, they have won only 14 of their last 34 games.
Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer described United’s first-half performance as “pathetic”.
Raheem Sterling, Yaya Toure and Wilfried Bony scored inside the first 22 minutes to put City in control, with Kevin De Bruyne adding a fourth before Fabio Borini replied for Sam Allardyce’s side.
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The Stoke City-Manchester United clash was the first of 10 games on Saturday in the English league.