All is not rosy in the Manchester United garden, with fans growing increasingly irritated by Louis van Gaal’s passive, possession-obsessed tactics.
Indeed, with his United team having failed to score a single first-half goal in their last 10 home games, the players were booed off the pitch at half-time during Saturday’s dull FA Cup tie against Sheffield United, with thousands of fans leaving early before Wayne Rooney settled things with a 93th-minute penalty.
Addressing the mass exodus after the match, Van Gaal asserted that many fans may have abandoned their seats “because of the traffic”.
However, it would appear that the pugnacious Dutchman has now conceded his team’s inert performances may also be a factor in the swirling vortex of unrest at Old Trafford, admitting in a press conference that even he gets tired of watching them sometimes:
There are matches that I have enjoyed and there are also matches where I’m very bored or angry because we are not disorganising our opponent’s defence, but that is football.
We really do feel like we’re entering the final phase of the cycle here. The fans are completely disenfranchised and ditching games early, the team is Manchester United in name only and the manager sounds completely indifferent to the whole thing.
It never tends to last very long once you get to this stage.