Louis van Gaal's crazy decisions will doom Manchester United to Thursday night football

If you were to watch highlights of Manchester United’s 0-0 draw with West Ham, you might come away with different impression of the game than someone who was obliged to sit through the whole thing. The match again demonstrated Louis van Gaal’s perverse approach to managing United this season, and shows why Champions League knockout football is by no means assured. Van Gaal is giving United little chance to make the most of their dwindling resources.

On the one hand, Van Gaal is presumably not playing with his first eleven, but that is a mixed blessing. The defence is, however, holding up despite the absences of Luke Shaw, Phil Jones, Marcos Rojo and Antonio Valencia. It is understandable that things might look a little rickety with a makeshift defence, but in truth it has been a superior part of the side when compared to the malfunctioning attack.

For all the reasonable criticism of Van Gaal this season - and there is an enormous amount of it to get through when someone reviews 2015/16 - he will leave seven or eight defenders who are well drilled in defence.

But even the injuries have often highlighted to Van Gaal where he is going wrong, only for the manager to ignore the evidence. When Wayne Rooney has been out injured, United may have had similarly bad results, but they have been able to keep the ball better in the opposition’s half, seizing on the chance to only pass to each other. With Rooney in attack, it feels like he loses the ball more often than not. He certainly slows down attacks even more than Van Gaal instructs his players to.

And we know the other players can do it, it’s just that Van Gaal won’t allow them to for most of the match. Against West Ham, United persisted with Marouane Fellaini hovering around as number 10 or second striker, and while he can still perform a fairly useful service in knocking down crosses, he otherwise slows down the attack in a similar manner. In this match, he could have passed to Jesse Lingard, free for a shot on the left of the box, but was too slow to release the pass.

When Bastian Schweinsteiger was replaced by Memphis, it showed how United can be far more effective. Fellaini moved back into central midfield, and the front four of Juan Mata, Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard and Memphis, teamed up well with Matteo Darmian and Guillermo Varela on the wings, and Michael Carrick’s passes into feet were used more constructively. United might have missed several chances - Mata, Martial and Lingard should be criticised for their rash strikes, and Fellaini earlier wasted a shot from two yards out - but at least they were making them more regularly.

And Varela’s presence, along with Memphis as a forward on the wing, showed how teams generally play at their best: with the players all playing their natural positions. Varela offered much more attacking threat on the right, and Memphis did the same on the left, and Mata was able to bring in players around him from the number 10 position. Obviously, it was far from perfect, but it was a significant improvement, stretching West Ham in the last 20 minutes, just as United benefited from a similar change after Rooney’s injury against Leicester.

However, this is all obvious stuff. It is clear that players perform best when in their correct positions. It is clear that if you have players capable of running at speed and controlling the ball, and playing accurate passes (such as the movement that saw Mata go close to scoring), then you should put them close to the goal to work towards one another, without a massive Belgian getting in the way.

It is obvious that if you have a captain who can no longer run or control the ball, then you shouldn’t play him until he can promise you he’ll look like a footballer again.

This isn’t tactical pseudery, or absurdly detailed changes that promise much in theory or little in practice; it is obvious ideas followed at successful clubs and it is obviously even more effective at United for the occasional few minutes Van Gaal is forced to use it.

But he chooses otherwise. He chooses to play Paddy McNair at right-back, with Morgan Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger as holding midfielders, with Fellaini as the creative hub and with the instruction to prioritise keeping the ball above actually trying to win games. These poor decisions have been repeated since the start of the season. They were there last season, it just seemed to be common sense that Van Gaal was dealing with a poor squad.

This is how Van Gaal wants to play football; and this is why Thursday night football is beckoning him and the rest of the club.