Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal says that he is not to blame when the team plays badly and that it is the performance of the players.
Since the highly- experienced manager took over the club last summer he has spent £150 million in the hope of getting Manchester United back in the Premier League next season with the ambition of spending even more money next summer to make sure they can compete with Europe’s best.
Most of last summer’s spending went for Real Madrid winger Angel Di Maria who van Gaal signed for a British record £59.7 million, and despite the big money the Argentinian is not playing as well as he should be.
Van Gaal has in recent weeks been criticised for the way United has been playing after reverting to a possession based game rather than the fast pace attacking football United fans had become accustomed to while Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge.
After losing 2-1 away to Swansea City last weekend, there is even more pressure is on the Dutchman to get results, and while he knows this he says that he should not have to take all the blame for a bad result.
‘It’s not always the fault of the manager, when a player is not performing well, I can tell you,’ he said.
‘I think not only Di Maria [is struggling], I think all the players.
‘My belief, and the belief of the board, is when you do things with your conscience, then it shall be better. But at the end, every player has to do each task with intuition, because that is the process. Di Maria needs to go through that process and at the end he shall be much better.
‘I know as a manager that he’s a very creative player and you can see this from the statistics.
‘He needs that space and I give that space, but he needs to do also things with his brain and that’s a learning process, not only with Di Maria but with all the players.’
