Abhranil Roy
If you had told me at the start of the season that United would end it by fighting for the 4th spot and for a semifinal berth in the FA Cup, I would have been disappointed. And that is exactly what I, and almost all United fans across the world are feeling at the moment. We just got humiliated at Spurs, and we are going to have to slog out an FA Cup quarter-final replay at West Ham next week. Although we did make it to the group stages of the Champions League via a play-off versus Club Brugge, we couldn’t qualify for the knockouts and ended up playing in the Europa League. Even there, we were beaten 3-1 on aggregate by our eternal rivals Liverpool, while we were already knocked out of the Capital One Cup by Middlesborough. Bad luck and bad decisions both have gone a long way in completely screwing up our season, and now all that we have left to fight for is a Champions League spot and an FA Cup win. And at the moment, both of those look unlikely.
Top 4 dreams:
The Red Devils are currently placed 5th in the league, on 53 points, 4 behind Manchester City at 4th and a staggering 19 points off league leaders Leicester City. We have been beaten at home by the likes of Norwich City and have managed only 39 goals in the league this season, which is less than the number of goals scored by even the newcomers AFC Bournemouth. The players have underperformed severely, especially the likes of Juan Mata, Matteo Darmian, Memphis Depay and Bastian Schweinsteiger, while ill-timed injuries to Rooney, Schneiderlin, and Phil Jones have hurt us big time.
Fan verdict:
While mathematically the 4th spot is still reachable, it seems like a really tough ask. Louis van Gaal seems too damn eager to prove that he is smarter than everyone else, so he makes decisions like employing Ashley Young as a striker when he has the likes of Marcus Rashford on the team. Thanks to his unrealistic tactics and “process”, United keep taking three steps backward after taking one step forward.
Paul Scholes summed it up best when he said that fighting for the FA Cup and a Champions League spot every season isn’t what Manchester United do, it’s what Arsenal does. We should not fall into this cycle of mediocrity and self appeasement, for you can never really escape it’s grasp . But it seems we are heading that way, which is what alarms and disappoints me so much. We still have some big games left, and the next 3 matches are all at Old Trafford, so one hopes we can garner full points from all of them and retain European nights at the Theatre of Dreams.
