Nowhere Left to Hide: Louis van Gaal Has Failed at Manchester United

An overwhelming sense of anti-climax and farce was a fitting end to Manchester United’s painful and grossly disappointing season.

But, of course, it isn’t over just yet.

Manchester United still have to play a meaningless game against Bournemouth at Old Trafford this week after Sunday’s game was abandoned following a security scare.

There will be nothing at stake, nothing to play for in this fixture, just more anti-climax and disappointment.

The last remaining UEFA Champions League place has disappeared over the hill in the possession of a spluttering Manchester City side. 

United will go through the motions in their rearranged fixture against Bournemouth knowing they are destined to slum it in the UEFA Europa League as a season-long punishment.

Should United win this final game it will mean they have missed out on the Champions League by goal difference, an apt symbol for where they have so obviously failed this season: scoring goals.

The statistics are damning of manager Louis van Gaal and his stale approach.

In Sir Alex Ferguson’s final season at Old Trafford, United scored 86 goals in winning the Premier League title, but this slipped to just 64 under David Moyes, and 62 in Van Gaal’s first campaign.

This season Manchester United have scored a barely believable 46 goals in 37 games under Van Gaal, two less than Sunderland, who narrowly avoided relegation, and just two more than Newcastle, who were sucked into the Championship.

This will be United’s lowest goals total since the 1989/90 season when they finished 13th and flirted with relegation by finishing only five points clear of the bottom three in the table.

There is a rich seam of statistics to cast Van Gaal in an …

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