Manchester United coach, Louis van Gaal has confessed he was “amazed” by Manchester United’s display as Arsenal got back to winning ways in some style.
United began the weekend atop of the Premier League standings, but have now been usurped by Manchester City and Arsenal after an embarrassing 3-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium.
Exceptional Alexis Sanchez efforts either side of a fine Mesut Ozil strike meant the match was over inside 19 minutes, leaving Van Gaal as perplexed as he was angry.
“I didn’t expect that,” he said. “I was surprised – not performing our game plan, not the will to win. I didn’t see that. We were top of the league so I was surprised – amazed, maybe that is a better word. When you give a team like Arsenal so much space to play football, then you know that you shall lose. And we have prepared ourselves also in that way, to play more contact but don’t lose your aggression. It was amazing for me and I am very disappointed.”
Van Gaal bemoaned United’s lack of intensity, aggression and pressing after defeat in north London – the worst possible way for his side to approach the international break.
“That I don’t know,” the Dutchman said when asked why the encounter had played out like that. I put the question already at half-time and also after the match because normally I say the things how I see it in the game. But, yeah, that is also difficult to answer for the players at this moment because they are all in an emotional moment. We have lost, we have lost in a way that you cannot lose when you are top of the bill or top of the league – you cannot start like we have started and they know that. The worst thing is that everybody is going away, even out of London airports. They are flying away and I cannot build up a new situation that they have the confidence to play football, to win your next battle against Everton away, for example.”
Van Gaal began to clam up after giving those initial answers in the post-match press conference, during which he defended the decision to leave defensive Morgan Schneiderlin on the bench. There were no selection questions for his Arsenal counterpart, though, which must have been a relief for Arsene Wenger after a tough few days dominated by the decision to play David Ospina.