What a fantastic thread for all those emoticons from my thread. People overestimate what 'foundations' are & get completely aggressive when talking about LVG.
LVG could never attract the players José has; players like pogba Lukaku and Bailey are players that are bought to be at the centre of our team to play the way the manager wants - they are Josés players and at the core of our tactics.
What LVG did was however briefly; move us on from the grand shadows of SAF and the confusion of Moyes - got rid of players like evra, RVP nearly all from a previous generation (apart from Rooney & this is why he was targeted) & got us playing a very basic, tactical type of football again coupled with some youngsters.
Ever since he came; he implemented a basic tactical awareness back to a club that had to change find its identity as quick as possible & however much we may need or want to play counter attacking football in the games José decides; we can flip a switch and play possession football when we want to.
Because that's what he meant about philosophy - United is theoretically speeking a possession football based team club ever since LVG's arrival & this will be shown in the games we decide to play that way down to the players that will break in to our first team in the future. The same with a 352.
For along time no one will have to rebalance the squad the way LVG did and initiate a new tactical approach - more what is needed is for the future managers be that from José to ppchetino to giggs - is to come in and find those players that play in the way their manager wants to.
We are right now a mix of a possession based counter attacking team due to the way José wants United to play; but united itself is a possession based football club & will be for a long time.
You were wumming in your thread with posts to provoke people; maybe as a response to the deserved smileys, but all the same you went on a wumming-mission.
Rashford, Lukaku & Martial are all high-pace players capable of playing on the counter, and we have more quality in defense to hit opponents on the break than we have in the middle to break teams down when they defend. United is also traditionally a counter-attacking, or at least direct team, posession has usually come through just being better than the opponent rather than circulation of the ball for most of the time.
With Pogba, we're capable of playing with the ball and breaking down teams, but not without him. The squad is simply not suited to play as you claim, and 3-5-2 is just one of multiple usable strategies, all depending on the opponent which is what Jose is all about, and as was commented in your thread he already used that at Inter. For the record I can find records of 3-5-2 from back when Germany was a split country, so it's not LvGs making. Bringing it to United may have been new (fairly certain we had a few games under Ferguson that was 3-5-2-like), but a introduction to a formation isnt groundbreaking stuff. If Van Gaal had left us with some good tools I wouldn't be against giving him credit for it, but the closest I'm getting is that our team looks more comfortable when pressed because they've gotten used to hog the ball for 90 minutes under Van Gaal.
We can agree that "foundation" means very little, if my assumption on that is acceptable from your post.
If all that's needed to "lay the foundations" is to say we'll play posession-football & shift to a new formation, any top-league manager could do it and there is nothing credible about that from a team's success once you're fired for not hitting the set targets or making the supporters enjoy the games.
Moyes & LvG were both terrible managers for Manchester United, there really isn't more to it.
Van Gaal identified that we were weak as shit in midfield when he came and he tried to address it. Considering how long teams, and for my own feelings United specifically tend to wait forever to fix lack of quality in specific areas on the pitch, this is something I was happy with LvG about. Buying a Cb (Rojo) midfielders (Herrera, Bastian, AdM & Schneiderlin) and a at the time striker that could figure on the wing (Martial) were all positive moves in my eyes based on our weakness areas for building a stronger squad, but he also sold players the club could have used as parts of the squad instead of a ton of youngsters that weren't ready, like Rafael, Nani, Chicharito, Kagawa & Zaha
(Not taking in Welbeck, Vidic & Evra into account as I'm slightly certain they decided to leave at the end of Moyes's tenure and just happened to go under LvG, and Rio was going down fast).
I'll give LvG credit for clearing out some of the dead-wood we had in the squad though, it was sorely needed but also something most fans on here were screaming about, especially Buttner, Bebe and the likes.
I believe in building squads of quality players that complement eachother and winning mentality within those squads.
But most managers who leave do so because they didn't win, not because of retirement like Heynckes or Sir Alex.
So you'll have to look at squads when a manager comes in and how many changes they've done and if those changes were good.
In that sense, I think Jose is right in that he tends to be good at spotting problem-areas and address them, although it naturally doesn't work 100% of the time as it doesn't with anyone. Ultimately it's hard for me to say if Van Gaal or Mourinho believe that they deserve much credit for tactical changes they do at any club, but I wouldn't call either unreasonable if they talk about squad-changes.
