Van Gaal has returned the arrogance that once propelled Man United

Posted Monday, June 29, 2015 by ESPN

It's too early to judge whether Manchester United are on their way back to the summit of English football, but they've certainly got their old swagger back. From the noises coming out of Old Trafford, you'd think that the club had only just missed out on the title in May and was now regrouping in anticipation of another tilt.

This weekend, Ryan Giggs echoed Louis van Gaal's contentious view that United were "close" last season with such confidence that you actually have to stop to remind yourself that his team were, for the most part, really quite poor in 2014-15. With just one transfer completed, that of Memphis Depay, there's absolutely no logical reason yet to think that the club will do any better than fourth again this season. And yet this arrogance is the best reason to believe that they might.

Arrogance suits United. They wear it well. That's why David Moyes failed at Old Trafford. He just couldn't grasp the mentality of the club. It is fuelled by the kind of arrogance that is so arrogant that it would not actually recognise itself as being arrogant. It would instead simply consider itself to be better than you and would then refuse to give the matter a second thought. Moyes, on the other hand, used to say that he wanted to "make things difficult" for opposing teams and once kept a struggling Robin van Persie on the pitch purely because he feared that the press would question him if he withdrew his top goal scorer.

Van Gaal would not do that. Van Gaal gets United. He wants to make things difficult for opposing teams by slaughtering them. If he thought that there was more chance of securing three points by replacing his leading goal scorer with a small kitten called Kevin, he would do it before halftime and then shout you down in the news conference afterward for failing to recognise Kevin's talents.

United were not close last season. They were not even nearly close. But if Van Gaal says it, you can expect most of the players to believe it, in spite of all available evidence.

They started badly last season, winning just three of their first 11 games. Then they went on an extraordinary winter run, losing just once between defeats on Nov. 2 and Feb. 21, without ever playing particularly well. Their four straight victories between mid-March and mid-April were the only consistent period in which they looked like a proper United side and they followed that golden streak with three straight defeats, picking up just five points from their last six games.

If it hadn't have been for the collapse of Liverpool and the fatigue of Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton, United would not have made the top four, and the fact that David De Gea was their player of the season speaks volumes. And he's almost certainly leaving.

But at United, none of this seems to have affected anyone. Van Gaal ended the season in raucous fashion, winning plaudits for an emotionally charged, defiant after-dinner speech that included unexpected praise for a saxophonist and a slap 'round the head for Giggs. Giggs himself has now told the press that United "aren't too far away" from winning the league.

Van Gaal has returned the arrogance that once propelled Man United
Louis van Gaal has instilled the sort of confidence at Manchester United that propelled the club under Sir Alex Ferguson.

And rather than chasing players with something to prove, like other clubs, they seem to be in pursuit of proven winners instead. The papers are crammed with stories about moves for men like Bastian Schweinsteiger and Sergio Ramos, elite players. It's almost like the last two years never happened.

Steve McClaren, assistant manager during the late-1990s, once said, "This team never loses games; they just run out of time occasionally." That was United in a nutshell. A team with high standards and expectations to match. Moyes couldn't replicate that spirit. Perhaps Van Gaal can.

He has had his transitional season. He has tried almost every available combination of players and almost every formation in the book. He has made it clear what he expects of his team and he has tried to impose a possession-heavy doctrine that seeks to prevent the opposition from scoring by simply never allowing them to have the ball. Now he needs to prove that all of this can lead to success.

There is much more to be done over the summer. In the remaining two months of the transfer window, better players are required to both reinforce and replace what is in position already. And then, of course, they actually have to win games of football.

We can't pretend to know how all this will unfold, but we can be sure of one thing. The arrogance and self-belief that propelled United to glory under Sir Alex Ferguson is back.