That's a tough one, on paper he's failed his objective, but in 10 years, people will look back and say two years at United, one FA Cup, not bad, top four finishes aren't remembered. I agree though, he's choked.
If you had spent £300m in 2 seasons at Sunderland and missed the Champions League you'd be considered a failure never mind doing it at Man Utd!
Like I said on another thread, Van Gaal didn't decide what to pay for the players. The only very poor purchase was Di Maria who was £59m and we sold him for £45m. He did a lot of good work also, such as buying Martial, bringing through Rashford and Fosu-Mensah, as well as showing faith in Lingard when most fans didn't rate him. He tied De Gea down to a new contract also. His net spend, considering who we got off the wage books, will be nowhere near the £250m mark. I didn't like the guy's football one bit, nor did I think he did a very good job, but I'm not gonna throw him under the bus, credit where it's due he did some good stuff here. Ultimately, he failed his objective of top 4, but again, nobody gives a damn about top 4 in the history books.
Right - Younes Kaboul would do well for us. BSA would be the signing of the season Signing Wes Brown for another season was wrong Wrong - Sod all because I'm perfect
Right - Johnson would get six years. Kane would be top goal scorer Wrong - Sunderland would finish top half.
Wrong (1) Leicester (2) Mourinho sacked (3) Chelsea and Man. City slipping so badly (4) Hibs winning the Scottish Cup (first time in 114 years!) (5) Johnson being that stupid. Right (1) er... er ... gimme time to think about it ( what an amazing season) One thing I've been really pleased about - in the last 10 years Bournemouth, Hearts and Dundee have all been nailed on to fold. All three are now in their Premier divisions. Ower the moon for all of them.
Rights: Defoe Kone (not that I knew much about him, just took one look at the ****er and said, he'll do). Watmore...graft and enthusiasm was desperately needed, and I thought his would be infectious. Wrongs: Relegation, thought it was done. N'Doye, and this one really gets under my skin. There's more to him than he showed imo, so he can **** right off.
Did you see him celebrating when we survived? You'd be forgiven for thinking it was him that had kept us up, the cheeky ****.
Watmore did a canny job like, he's got a way to go yet but he's always very effective which is a good starting point. I sure as hell wouldn't want to try and mark him.
From afar, I thought Watmore added something to the relegation scrap that only he could. Obviously not raw talent, but just unbridled effort. So easy to underestimate how that effects your teamates.
He did, he's completely fearless and no matter what the situation every time he was subbed on he'd be looking to run at the opposition defence every chance he got. It doesn't matter how good a defence is, they don't like fast players running at them. He's a good lad and he did well for us when the chips were down, it bodes well.
Wrong - stop wasting time with Kone, he's not coming, Man C & Chelski to be miles ahead of the rest Leicester mad to take Ranieri Pants here for years Right - our pre season was bollocks Mags will keep smileyman too long & be in trouble We won't go down.
Wrong : 14 losses in the first 23 games . Right : Not blinking and sticking with Big Sam through a horrendous December and letting him transfer in January without restriction , leading to only 3 losses in the last 15 games . The transfers were front and center to your survival IMO
Wrong - Kirchhoff should get back on the first plane back to Germany after his debut. Lens would be a world beater for us. Kone saga "move onto someone else". Leicester/Ranieri is a perfect combination... for relegation. Right - Advocaat should never have re-signed for us Big Sam was the right appointment