Cup glory will do nothing to hide clear flaws in the Van Gaal regime

Two years on from Louis van Gaal’s appointment as Manchester United manager, players experience a familiar feeling when they turn up each day for training — one of bafflement.

Van Gaal will take charge of his 103rd — and possibly last — match as United manager this evening when his team face Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final. Winning the FA Cup in 1990 saved Alex Ferguson from the sack, but lifting the most famous domestic cup of all may not be enough to prevent Ed Woodward from handing Van Gaal his P45.

Van Gaal has spent more than a quarter of a billion pounds on transfers since his arrival, but this season he has failed to deliver a return to the Champions League, as was asked of him by the board at the beginning of the campaign.

Rumours about dressing-room disquiet have dogged Van Gaal throughout his spell in charge and The Times has learnt that the Dutchman’s regimented training drills are still not well received by the playing squad.

“Sometimes the players turn up and think, what the f*** are we doing this for?” one source said this week.

Some United supporters showed their dissatisfaction towards Van Gaal on Tuesday by booing him as he addressed the sparse crowd at Old Trafford following the 3-1 win over Bournemouth that confirmed their place in the Europa League next season.

There has been no indication from the club about Van Gaal’s position since December, when they lost four matches in a row for the first time since 1961 and privately the board said the manager would not be sacked.

Joel and Avram Glazer, the executive co-chairmen, Woodward, the executive vice-chairman, and Richard Arnold, the managing director whom Van Gaal sits next to on flights to European matches, will decide whether the manager stays or goes and none of them is saying anything on the matter. What is clear is that there will be uproar on the red side of Wembley this evening if United do not beat Crystal Palace and lift their first FA Cup in 12 years.

As Van Gaal pointed out at his press conference on Thursday, United “need” this win. They need it to finally put a bridge between themselves and the Ferguson era. Three years is far too long for a club of United’s stature to go without a trophy. Victory in London today would end the club’s trophy drought, but the case for sacking Van Gaal is growing by the day.

Van Gaal can, at times, be distant with his players. A friend of Radamel Falcao claims that the Colombia striker was told via email that he was going to play for the under-21 side last year.

There has also been bafflement at the club regarding some of Van Gaal’s tactical decisions. Dressing-room insiders were shocked to see Juan Mata, a World Cup and European Championship winner, replaced by Nick Powell, who was later loaned out to Hull City after only one more substitute appearance, when United were behind in their must-win Champions League group game in Wolfsburg.

It is understood that the United board had expected Van Gaal’s team to finish top of their group with one match to go and yet they limped out of what appeared to be an easy group and into the Europa League, where they suffered the humiliation of being eliminated by Liverpool, their bitter rivals.

The constant shuffling around of players from their favoured positions has also caused consternation at the club. Ashley Young has played in five positions this season. Three others (Jesse Lingard, Memphis Depay and Andreas Pereira) have played in four different slots.

The most bizarre decision came when Van Gaal removed Marcus Rashford, the in-form United striker, at half-time with the score at 0-0 during the key match away to Tottenham Hotspur on April 10. Van Gaal pushed Young up front and United went on to lose 3-0.

“The neutral was probably thinking, ‘Why has he done that?” said Mickey Thomas, the former United midfielder. at the time. “He will live and die by his decisions. The manager has probably seen something that we haven’t from the touchline. Maybe he worked on that plan in the week.”

United’s fifth-placed finish in the Premier League shows that they have regressed over the past 12 months and the turgid football remains a source of irritation for the club’s supporters.

“I speak to a lot of supporters and I think the main problem is that United have a style of football traditionally and Van Gaal hasn’t been able to fulfil it,” said Sean Bones, vice chairman of the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust. “We like to play with wingers and pace and so far he hasn’t got into the United blueprint.”

Yet, despite all the criticism of him, Van Gaal does not show any signs of wanting to leave, not in public at least. He is settled in the flat he is renting in the Cheshire village of Bowdon and is said to dine occasionally at Victor’s restaurant in nearby Hale. Van Gaal rarely ventures into the centre of Manchester. If he does, it will be to dine at his favourite restaurant, Wing’s.

On the wall of the Cantonese restaurant in Lincoln Square hangs a shiny, framed plate with a message from Van Gaal written on it.

The message is addressed to the Cantonese restaurant’s owner, Wing Shing Chu, or “Wing” to his friends, of which Van Gaal is one. “To Wing,” Van Gaal writes, “relationship is a matter of a process! But your Chinese food was from the beginning fantastic!”

At the beginning of his time at United, Van Gaal was quickly flavour of the month, too. Having won 19 trophies during his club career and just led an unfancied Holland to third in the World Cup in Brazil, it was easy to see why Woodward thought Van Gaal would be the man to bring back the glory days after David Moyes’s failed reign.

Moyes maintained a number of working practices from his time at Everton when he joined United. The Scot looked sheepish in the tiny room where he used to conduct his press conferences at the AON Training Complex in Carrington. Van Gaal chose a bigger room in the Jimmy Murphy Centre for his media briefings, in which he enjoyed taking centre stage — at the beginning.

Van Gaal and United seemed a perfect fit. Here was a box-office manager in charge of a box-office club, it seemed. The Dutchman made changes immediately. He introduced double training sessions on tour, round tables replaced rectangular ones at dinner times so the players interacted more and the new manager insisted that only one language was spoken: English.

Those who work with him on a daily basis talk about how meticulous he is when it comes to time-keeping and organising. He will always take into account how long it will take him to walk across the car park at Carrington so he is on time for his next meeting and arrives in his silver Mercedes well before the players do every day.

“He is never late,” one training ground source says. “If you are late, he will tell you that you are late. If you are early, he will tell you that you are early.”

Van Gaal is understood to sit with his coaching staff during meal times, leaving the players to their own tables. And in a move welcomed by the players, the ban on chips and ketchup, introduced by Moyes, has been lifted.

Supporters used to admire the combative way straight-talking Van Gaal approached his press conferences, but their relationship with him has deteriorated. Many are getting tired of the “process” Van Gaal is undertaking at the self-styled biggest club in the world. United supporters may not have clubbed together to fly a banner over Old Trafford yet, but placards have started emerging at the famous old ground calling for the 64-year-old manager to go.

One polite protester had written “Hopefully bye bye Van Gaal” on a big piece of card at United’s rearranged game against Bournemouth. Two others were far more blunt. One read: “Time to go Louis! Not good enough” while another screamed: “GLAZER$ + ED + LVG = THE DEATH OF MUFC.”

Van Gaal’s relationship with the media has worsened over the past six months after it emerged that United officials had met representatives of José Mourinho, the former Chelsea manager who looks set to replace the incumbent if he is sacked.

It is understood that Van Gaal reads cuttings from the national and regional press and remembers anyone who criticises him in print. That explains why the United manager has become more curt in his press conferences recently. There are fewer jokes and tales from the past. Van Gaal will not talk about individual players, contracts or transfers and when his future is brought up, he responds by telling his inquisitors that they have supposedly undermined him by “sacking” him with their reports.

But Ruud Bröring, Van Gaal’s amiable lifelong friend, insists the snappy Dutchman we see in front of the camera is not always the real Van Gaal.

“In the press conferences he is sometimes like an actor,” says Bröring, who first met Van Gaal when they were training to become PE teachers in Amsterdam in 1969. “We learnt that to manage a group, you sometimes have to act a little bit. That is often what we did with our pupils in the gym. He is always straight, but it’s also a performance. And a lot of it is outstanding.”

On the pitch he has bought himself time and earned plaudits by bringing through youngsters such as Rashford, who has made the provisional England squad for Euro 2016 after a run of eight goals in 17 games, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, the Dutch full back, and Jesse Lingard, the United academy graduate from Warrington.

“It’s a difficult decision on whether he should be sacked,” says Louis Saha, the former United striker, who has created the athlete networking website Axis Stars since retiring. “If you had asked me three months ago, my response would be more radical but now the situation looks a little bit better. The football has got better. It seems like he is developing something.”

The 68-year-old Bröring used to play cards with Van Gaal and three others every month before he moved to England. He speaks with the United manager occasionally and is convinced that he will be a success at the club if he is allowed to carry on. “Just give him some time. He has been successful wherever he has been,” says Bröring, who chuckles when he recalls one card game that Van Gaal won at Christmas a few years ago.

“It was the last game, at 12.30am, and Louis won. He jumped up and ran around the table and said, ‘I played fantastic. I was the best. I was the best,’ ” Bröring says.

“But he didn’t see with his size 45 shoes [11.5] that there were two bottles of lemonade stood up against each other. They smashed and lemonade went all over the Christmas tree. There was a lot of noise so my wife came down the stairs and said, ‘What is happening, was it a burglar?’

“I said, ‘No, Louis was just a bit excited that he had won.’ He is very humorous. You could not wish for a better friend.”

Come 7.30pm this evening, Woodward will have all the cards laid out in front of him. He must then decide whether to stick or to twist.

Tony Cascarino: Where the FA Cup can be won and lost

Key clashes

Anthony Martial v Joel Ward Ward, the Palace right back, right, must not be adventurous today as he faces United’s most threatening player. Martial, left, can be quiet for a while but then suddenly spurt into life. The France forward is quick and technically excellent. He will probably play wide on the left but he is liable to run directly at goal like a centre forward.

Marcus Rashford v Damien Delaney Rashford is already a fine all-round forward for United at 18, decent in the air and with the pace to run behind defenders. He is a really strong runner: when his run reaches 10 or 15 yards he is still accelerating. He is certainly faster than Delaney and Scott Dann, the Palace centre backs, who must sit half a yard off him to give themselves a chance to beat him in a race to collect a through ball.

Yannick Bolasie v Antonio Valencia Right back has been a problem position throughout this season for United, who must get it right today, when Bolasie will patrol Palace’s left wing. When he was out of the team through injury Palace found it hard to hurt the opposition. He gives them an extra dimension, an unpredictability. Opponents will think that they are in a good shape defensively, but Bolasie has the ability to burst past a defender from a standing start and create danger.

19 United FA Cup appearances after today, equal most with Arsenal; they can join Arsenal on most wins with 12

36 Times in 38 years that the FA Cup will have been won by a club from London or the North West (exceptions: Coventry in 1987, Portsmouth in 2008).

15 Palace’s league position. Since 1980 only Wigan, relegated in 2013, have finished lower in a season when they won the FA Cup

3 Times in past 20 years that the final has been won by the lower-ranked team in league (Palace finished lower than United this season)

1 0-0 draw in past 99 FA Cup final matches (including 6 replays): Arsenal v Man Utd in 2005 (Arsenal won 5-4 on pens)

TV: BBC One and BT Sport 2

Kick-off: 5.30pm