Four reasons why sacking Van Gaal would be short-sighted

Louis Van Gaal must have the liked of Feillaini firing again.  

In Summary

HIRING & FIRING? The sacking of top managers addresses the symptoms but not the disease which right now can be diagnosed as the upping of the competitiveness bar by the ‘smaller clubs’.

Manchester United sit out of the top four in the English Premier League, are out of automatic Champions League reckoning and are burdened with the kind of form that does very little to suggest that qualification will come easily.

And yet it is also telling that Manchester United should be involved in a scrap for Champions League qualification.
The current reality though is that an improvement from seventh to fourth has done nothing to dampen the expectation that a club of Manchester United’s clout must, with all its investments, be challenging for the title.

Yet they have dropped out of the Champions league, possess neither the cavalier approach of Leicester or the kind of consistency that has Arsenal fans rising up from a decade old banter-hibernation.
And so this is what is responsible for the boos of dissatisfaction that started ringing out a few weeks ago, and have now grown into audible calls for the replacement of Louis Van Gaal with Jose Mourinho, if for no other reason, than the fact he is now available having been sacked for his own deficiencies!

Such is the nature of the beast these days. Change comes easily to many folks tongues and for its own sake even if the revolving doors of managerial change don’t reveal a glowing picture of effectiveness.

For that matter below are four reasons why I think sacking Van Gaal would be a disaster of tremendous short sightedness

Symptoms not disease
The sacking of top managers addresses the symptoms but not the disease which right now can be diagnosed as the upping of the competitiveness bar by ‘smaller clubs’ emboldened by the big Television money. Leicester isn’t on top of the table by accident.

Replacements
If we only considered managers out of contract and dismissed Brendan Rogers and David Moyes as a step backward that would leave us with Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho

But one gets the sense that Pep Guardiola is already spoken for and the rumour that Fergie unsuccessfully sounded him out three years ago would suggest he doesn’t see his future at United. Jose Mourinho, on the other hand, has admitted an ambition to manage United, but replacing a coach with an imminent dressing room revolt with one who fell victim to one doesn’t appear sensible to me.

Squad
Any new coach would in the immediate term inherit players that are aging like Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick and Bastian Schwenstieger, or still trying to cope with a new environment like Memphis Deepay, Anthony Martial and Matteo Darmian.

Track record
United have no proof of concept to draw from. Frequent managerial sackings have delivered very little beyond fresh air at Man City, Chelsea, Tottenham, Newcastle or Sunderland.
Right now though Van Gaal must win games over the festive period and especially the FA Cup fourth round game in January to get breathing space as a man no less than Sir Alex Ferguson would advise. If it wasn’t for that FA Cup replay almost three decades ago, there would be no 38 trophies that fans use to rationalize their fickle nature.