The grim reaper will not be necessary at Goodison Park on Sunday afternoon. Louis van Gaal visits the venue where David Moyes was poignantly reminded of his disposability in his final game as Manchester United manager with his new-look team higher in the table than Everton, on course for a Champions League place and with Roberto Martínez predicting the trophies will start to roll into Old Trafford next season.
After an unpromising start Van Gaal has managed what Moyes could not and produced a side that plays as a United team should. The arguments will rage about whether some sort of sacrificial interim was necessary to act as a buffer after the Sir Alex Ferguson years or whether United should have gone straight down the supercoach route and made an approach to José Mourinho, but the issue has been resolved now. Van Gaal looks like delivering on the target he was set at the start of the season, a top-four finish, even if he sets himself slightly higher standards than that. “The club set Europe as the goal for me to achieve but that is not my only aim,” Van Gaal said. “I am here to win championships, not to finish third or fourth. Maybe next year.”
The bottom line is that Moyes could never really have uttered a line like that with any conviction, just as he could not command the attention of the game’s leading players and most powerful agents in the way Van Gaal can. When the present United coach promises summer signings are imminent – “We are already busy with next season” – it is not only easy to believe him but safe to assume some impressive players will be involved. With Van Gaal at the helm United are an attractive proposition again, whereas when Moyes used to claim leading players were interested in joining the club it sounded more as if he was reassuring himself that the brand still meant something, especially when the signing of Juan Mata seemed more like a Mourinho idea and Everton were able to extract an inflated sum for Marouane Fellaini.
Returning to play at his old club for the first time since following Moyes to Old Trafford – he was an unused substitute last year, booed by the home crowd while warming up on the touchline – the Belgian no longer looks quite so overpriced. Van Gaal has accommodated him cleverly, possibly brought the best out of him, even if one suspects his place in the starting XI will be threatened by new arrivals over the summer. For the game at Stamford Bridge last week Mourinho paid Fellaini the compliment of working out how to neutralise his threat in training. The Chelsea manager is meticulous like that, leaving nothing to chance, as Van Gaal well knows. He is also provocative and somewhat smug in victory, as Van Gaal can often be, though the United manager did not particularly care for Mourinho’s post-match remark that the game had gone exactly as planned.
“You can say anything in victory,” Van Gaal said. “It gives you the right, no one can argue. But we were unlucky in that game, we did well to create so many chances against such a defensive team, and we came close to taking one or two of them. I was pleased with the performance, apart from the result. That is how I want my team to play and I don’t think you can claim it as a tactic if you are only defending in your own half against Manchester United.”
If United play as well at Goodison, they should come away with something, for defending has been a sore point under Martínez this season, as indeed it was during his time at Wigan. Everton finished fifth last season, a feat that is becoming as hard to remember as the fact that they have won their last two home games against United, on each occasion without conceding a goal. Martínez had his side punching above their weight in his first season, certainly above their financial clout, though it is important to remember that last season was a little topsy-turvy because United finished eighth.
Everton do not normally expect to finish above United and, given the gap in resources, nor will they very often in the future. If United are back in the top four, for Everton to finish best of the rest would involve staying ahead of Liverpool and Spurs, not to mention Southampton. That is not going to happen in too many seasons without an injection of cash, and even the relentlessly optimistic Martínez seems to understand that. “We have to be creative in finding a way to challenge the best budgets,” he said. That is not thought to be code for selling Ross Barkley or Kevin Mirallas to the highest bidder, but that might happen whether Martínez likes it or not. Fellaini, United’s player of the moment, and Wayne Rooney, their captain, serve as a reminder of what normally happens to Everton’s best players.
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