Sports Babble - sports forum

Huge respect to the retiring Louis Van Gaal for me one of the greatest managers of all time

I can happily go on about that masterful Ajax side who were that good he took most to Barcelona with him, didn't lose a game for like 2.5 years or something

High`s and lows with Barcelona and Bayern Munich but one the league with both, probably even more successful was winning the Dutch league with AZ Alkmaar breaking the dominance of the traditional big three

Playing superb football saw him manage the Dutch National team to third place at the World Cup, even greater if you remember that side had Jonathan De Guzman, Ron Vlaar and Leroy Fer in it!

So Manchester United didn't go great, for me was a super appointment but the football was Chelsea-esque sideways stuff although his press conferences were great
Whilst he moved on a lot of the old guard win did win the FA cup again and most spectacularly he deserves immense credit for actually playing and developing our young players- Martial, Blackett, Lingard, Powell, Fonsu Mensah and Rashford among them

I think LVG arrived at Old Trafford at the wrong time but he still stabilised the team without ever being too spectacular about it. "Safe footie" seemed to be the "order of the day" for the best part of his period of tenure. He laid the "foundations" of a better team with effective development of young players.