I think a lot of the undecided crowd don't fully appreciate the scale of LVG's job here. Cast your mind back to where we were this time last year and how we were getting absolutely dicked on by teams that had no business of doing so. We were a shell of a team and indeed, a shell of a club. Van Gaal has come in and predominantly using players who had been available to Moyes, has stabilised us enough to get top 4. Not only that, he has been in the process of totally transforming the way we play the game, and improving us tactically. Rather than the relatively basic 4-4-2/4-2-3-1 we had under Fergie and Moyes, we're now playing a possession sytem, while also getting to grips with multiple systems which will no doubt be used when necessary at potentially any point during games, never mind the season. That is LVG's overall aim with his philosophy: for us to be able to be flexible and be able to play in a variety of fashions.
During this period of transition we have also beaten almost all our immediate rivals for a top 4 slot and have shown we can compete with the best team in the league in both matches we have come up against them. Which is in stark contrast to the horror shows we had home and away against City, Liverpool and away against Chelsea. Furthermore, LVG has got the team believing in themselves again. I still shudder when I think back to the days of Moyes setting us up to be difficult to fecking beat against Newcastle, FFS! We are now winning points when we have been poor. Our resolve and confidence is back. We genuinely can't put a price on that, and it is a quality which will be invaluable come next season.
Is his job done? Of course not, and because of the injuries and late start because of the World Cup, he entered the job in less than ideal circumstances to say the least. He could not make any real improvements to a defence which was shorn of three quarters of a Champions League winning defence, simply because he did not have the time to do so. He could only make one midfield signing, when we all knew it was only half or even a third of the job done. While he has also been dealt the potentially killer blow of having the 300 grand a week albatross named Wayne Rooney land on him, as well as the unforeseen dip that RVP has experienced, in addition to the inability of Falcao to adjust. If we had one striker who had the necessary movement and flexibility to play in a 4-3-3; even someone half decent on the level of Saha, I guarantee that we would have been battering teams to death this season, especially the ones who parked the bus. Everyone talking about our sterile sideways passing seem to be missing the point when they blame the tactics. It's the personnel in attack which LVG inherited from Moyes and Fergie, which has been the biggest stumbling block to us as a team, rather than LVG. It's unfortunate, and we could possibly blame LVG for adhering to the status quo, but when you think of the mitigating circumstances of his late start and almost constant injuries during the first half of the season, I suppose we could cut him a bit of slack.
So, taking everything into account, I think he's done a good job in getting us back into Europe and in a position where we can more readily attract the players of the necessary quality we need to challenge at home and Europe, while also further improving the performances of players who looked either hilariously out of their depth this time last year, or looked like misfits tactically.