Manchester United’s performances against Chelsea and Manchester City show they are heading in right direction

Despite losing 1-0 to the noisy neighbours, Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United can take a lot of positives away from their performance in the tight derby. Jaideep Vaidya takes a look back at the match and looks to the future for the war-torn Reds.

There will come a time soon – perhaps later this season, or maybe next season – when Louis van Gaal will look back at his start as manager and smile. With just three wins and just 13 points in their first ten games, United have recorded their poorest start to the season since 1986-87, which had led to manager Ron Atkinson being sacked soon after.

After Sunday’s 1-0 defeat at Manchester City – their fourth straight derby loss – United are 13 points south of league leaders Chelsea, languish at 10th place in the table and are four points short of their tally at this stage last season. Van Gaal’s three months that he had requested for his philosophy to kick in and turn around United’s fortunes are long gone and his team are yet to record a win away from home this season. They are out of the League Cup, following a humiliating 4-0 defeat at MK Dons, and don’t even have the distraction of midweek Champions League football to blame it on. All this, after having spent £150 million in the transfer window.

Statistics are clearly not on Van Gaal’s side. But are Manchester United really worse off than they were last season? If their last two matches are anything to go by, the answer is no.

The Red Devils went into last week’s fixture against Jose Mourinho’s unbeaten Chelsea at Old Trafford as the clear second favourites. However, for a majority of the first half and parts of the second, they were clearly the better side. Despite conceding a goal early in the second half United persevered, held on for their lives and did not allow Chelsea to build on to their lead and finish the game.

As the match neared its end, it was United, sans captain Wayne Rooney, who were asking the questions and eventually, true to their innate tradition of escapology, bagged a 94th minute equaliser a la Robin van Persie. Buoyed by their own performance, and due to their neighbouring rivals’ blip in form, United surprisingly entered Van Gaal’s first Manchester Derby as favourites, if by only a whisker.

Perhaps that was to be their undoing, as everything that could possibly go wrong did. United started the derby with a make-shift right-back in Antonio Valencia after first-choice Rafael injured himself in training. Six minutes before half time, centre-back Chris Smalling was sent off for two highly idiotic yellow card offences.

Nine minutes into the second half their other centre-back, Marcos Rojo, went in for a dangerous sliding tackle and ended up dislocating his own shoulder, which meant that United played the last 36 minutes with a centre-back pairing of Michael Carrick, playing his first game of the season, and Paddy McNair, a 19-year-old rookie who had been fast-tracked into senior squad due to a serpentine injury list. 

Yet, but for a 15-minute period in the second half after City took the lead via a terrific goal from Sergio Aguero, it wasn’t United who looked like they were down to ten men. Mind you, United were nowhere near Sir Alex Ferguson’s ruthless title-winning teams of the years gone by.

They were sloppy in the final third, they were losing the ball far too easily even with 11 men, they had their goalkeeper David De Gea, who made a couple of world-class saves, and referee Michael Oliver, who denied the hosts at least two clear penalty appeals, to thank for keeping them in the game.

However, despite the fact that United had only themselves to blame for the ridiculous situation they were in, the ten men on the pitch showed the drive and the determination to keep going and look for the equaliser. As the match entered the final ten minutes of normal time, it was the City fans who were biting their nails and cupping their eyes, as the few thousand supporters in red egged their team forward.

The goal never came and City took all three points, but there was one team that took far more positives from the game than the other, and that team wasn’t wearing sky blue. In the corresponding fixture last season, United were trailing 4-0 with more than 40 minutes left to play and with all 11 men on the pitch.

The Red Devils of 2013-14 were anything but devils: they looked hopelessly lost during games, had a one-dimensional plan of attack, could barely string a handful of passes together and hardly ever showed the resolve to fight back when down. Van Gaal’s United, admittedly with far more on-paper quality than last season, are slowly, but steadily understanding each other and building into a cohesive unit, minor glimpses of which have been visible in the last couple of games.

United’s biggest flaw is their back four, which has needed more changes than a baby’s diaper. Imagine Chelsea without their spine of Branislav Ivanovic, John Terry, Gary Cahill, Cesar Azpuilicueta and Luis Felipe. Or City, without Pablo Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany, Martin Demichelis, Aleksandar Kolarov and Gael Clichy. Once Van Gaal does get his first-choice XI playing a run of games together, that’s when he and the team can truly be judged. And considering how United have played against two of the top three teams this season, there is no doubt that the team is headed in the right direction.

United’s next ten games, which will take them through to New Years’ Day, are: Crystal Palace at home, Arsenal away, Hull City at home, Stoke City at home, Southampton away, Liverpool at home, Aston Villa away, Newcastle at home, Tottenham away and Stoke City away. If United can win at least seven out of these ten games, they should be in a good position to achieve their most realistic target this season – a top-four finish.

Van Gaal has his task cut out, in spite of the fact that he is likely to get a longer leash than his predecessor David Moyes due to his reputation. Not only is he building a team for the future, but he has also been tasked with re-instilling the confidence back into the 20-time league champions and getting them out of the abyss created last season.

United are just about clambering up to ground level, with an Everest lying ahead.

Follow @Jaideepjourno