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Originally Posted by Semantic Lisp
and yet season 1 will end with no foundation whatsoever in the making, which would seem a bit of an oversight considering how obvious it was to everyone that sorting the defence out was blatantly the top priority
no-one should be remotely fooled by the defensive record United has somehow achieved so far either because both the number of chances the opposition has created and how easily they've been created has been truly shocking game in game out, and only the GK has kept the score down.
the worry is that not only is De Gea likely to leave sooner rather than later, but LVG is unlikely to be in a position to jettison any of Evans, Smalling and Jones in the summer, let alone replace all of them at once.
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In terms of foundations, the players that stay will have benefitted from working under van Gaal, as most players do, and he’s had a season to truly assess what further changes are needed. It's not much, but I think it's the start of something hopefully positive.
Yes the defence needed sorting, but the realisation that the young players Fergie based our future on largely aren’t going to prove good enough makes it a lot more difficult, as it turns out van Gaal is having to build pretty much a whole new team. As you suggest, the next central defensive partnership looks unlikely to include Evans, Smalling or Jones, while Rafael looks doomed and the Clevz, Welbz and Kagawa situations didn’t work out.
With half a dozen of the most experienced players leaving over the last 18 months, van Persie’s decline and the greater frequencey of Carrick’s injuries, a new United is having to be built far more quickly than is ideally healthy, isn’t it?