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Premier League: Jose Mourinho trying to airbrush Louis Van Gaal out of Manchester United history

Premier League: Jose Mourinho trying to airbrush Louis Van Gaal out of Manchester United history

The journey from Louis van Gaal’s ally to the anti-Van Gaal took Jose Mourinho a decade and a half. He went from being the Dutchman’s sidekick at Barcelona to his successor at Manchester United. If most managers are appointed to be the antidote to their predecessor, Mourinho is proving that in the wrong way in one respect, leading a team that finished fourth and fifth to sixth, and an extreme example in another.

He is trying to reverse Van Gaal’s decisions. He has omitted his signings. It is a moot point if he is repudiating Van Gaal, trying to airbrush him out of history or simply looking to rewind the clock to the time before his arrival; whichever, he is implying it was a reign of error. He uses the Dutchman to illustrate the scale of his task, while preferring not to mention the older man by name. He underlines that he has to reformat the entire team, implying he has to remove Van Gaal’s idiosyncratic instructions from their thought processes.

He can be surgical in dissecting the differences he sees: his defenders mark zonally, not man for man; they defend higher up the pitch, not in a low block; his team pass forwards, not sideways; they play between the lines, not on the half-way line. He has never had to alter so much so quickly, he has said, and if it seems an argument to buy himself time, it is probably also true.

In public, Mourinho merely stresses he is different to the man who went before. “I am not better than the others and the others are not better than me,” he said last week. The inference, though, is that his way is better. In his defence, Van Gaal was so quixotically odd that any successor would have faced the challenge of stripping the side of some of his infamous philosophy.

Mourinho seems to have approached it by purging his players. Only one Van Gaal signing has regularly seemed a first choice and Ander Herrera, who was often overlooked by the Dutchman, was identified and scouted by David Moyes. Van Gaal gave the green light to the Spaniard’s arrival but Herrera, who was at Old Trafford before him, is not really one of his buys.

Only three of those who started the last league game, at Everton, were. Yet examine each case and none have really had Mourinho’s seal of approval for long. Anthony Martial’s exclusion has felt most surprising, the Frenchman beginning only two of the last nine league matches. Matteo Darmian was overlooked at right-back and only the third man he turned to at left-back. Marcos Rojo’s chance in the centre of defence only came when both Eric Bailly and Chris Smalling were injured.


Then look at Van Gaal’s other additions. Daley Blind at least started the season in the side. Luke Shaw, another product of Moyes’ scouting, does not really count, but has tumbled down the pecking order anyway. Memphis Depay, bizarrely described by Van Gaal as the greatest talent of his generation, has only been granted 20 minutes of top-flight football, spread across four cameos. Morgan Schneiderlin has 11 minutes of Premier League action in three substitute appearances. Most obviously, there is Bastian Schweinsteiger, exiled to train with the youth team before belatedly being granted a first appearance under Mourinho.

The German was the designated fall guy, a face of regime change, one intrinsically associated with Van Gaal, for whom he played at Bayern Munich, and whose immobility seemed to symbolise the side. Schweinsteiger may have showed he is more than that, but Van Gaal’s remaining recruits, even before Shaw and Herrera are factored in, came at a cost that could exceed £150 million, including Martial’s add-ons, and seem squad players at best. United overpaid for some and overrated others, but the wholesale change feels a statement in itself.

It is not unknown for a manager to omit his predecessor’s players (and may be stranger that, in Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Mourinho long refused to select one of his own signings) but, considering the cost of some and the pedigree of others, it is still remarkable.

Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho
Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho

Especially when set against an unexpected fondness for David Moyes’ players. Marouane Fellaini’s calamitous cameo at Everton may have changed Mourinho’s opinion about the Belgian but he and Juan Mata have figured more than many may have predicted. Include Herrera and even Shaw, who initially met with his support, and perhaps Mourinho values the Scot’s eye for a player.

Now United can look something of a hybrid side, bridging together different generations: not so much in terms of age, but players associated with the incumbent and a manager who retired three-and-a-half years ago. It is possible to envisage sides featuring Mourinho’s four buys – Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, Bailly and Mkhitaryan – accompanied by a core of survivors of Sir Alex Ferguson’s United, in David de Gea, Antonio Valencia, Michael Carrick, either Phil Jones or Smalling and possibly Wayne Rooney, accompanied by a left-back, all of whom arrived under Van Gaal.

If Ferguson is the role model for Mourinho, the manager to emulate, it is understandable he is trying to turn the clock back to 2013, to pretend Van Gaal’s reign never happened while using it as an explanation for current struggles. Yet with his liking for Moyes’ men, the unexpected element is that United are revisiting 2014, too: just the part before Van Gaal was appointed.