Manchester United need to focus all of their energies on winning the Europa League
Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal is smart enough to know that his club’s only path to a Champions League berth is to win the Europa League. As a result, he should punt the Premier League in order to focus all of his squad’s energies on the European competition.
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Van Gaal called his club’s challenge to make the Premier League’s top four “difficult” after a stunning 2-1 defeat at Sunderland. The loss leaves United six points behind rival club Manchester City, who also has a game in hand. With such little time left in the season, the chances of United cracking the top four are slim.
Credit van Gaal for having the self-awareness to recognize his club’s reality. This isn’t always a strong suit of the egotistical manager. Now, it’s time to see if he has the nerve to do what needs to be done with that new reality. He must completely shift his team’s focus from the Premier League to the Europa League.
Such a drastic step won’t make fans at Old Trafford happy. United fans expect their club to be able to challenge in all competitions, not just one. That just isn’t possible for their beloved club at this point in time.
What I’m advocating for is a complete punt of the Premier League. If van Gaal truly realizes the difficulty of that path to the Champions League, he should also see that it doesn’t do anything for his team any longer. The only thing of note they can achieve now is to garner a Europa League title.
Such an accomplishment is also the only thing left that could save van Gaal’s job at the club. He shouldn’t make this philosophical shift because of that reason, but it’s a nice perk. He may be sacked in any case, but he’s almost certainly done at the club if they fail to achieve Champions League qualification.
The injury struggles of the squad also play into this line of thinking. Right back Matteo Darmian went out injured against Sunderland and is just the latest in a long line of injuries for the club. His absence only compounds what was already a pretty troubling injury situation at Old Trafford. Injuries are just one more reason that the club need to prioritize just one competition.
Punting the Premier League doesn’t mean that the remaining matches would be worthless for the club. On the contrary, they can be used to gain wonderful experience for the young players on the squad. Young players like Will Keane, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Donald Love (along with several others) could benefit greatly from real Premier League playing time. Why not let them own the remaining portion of the league schedule?
Many of United’s older players could frankly use the rest. Van Gaal has a plethora of players who are on the downside of their careers in terms of years. Men like Bastian Schweinsteiger, Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick could benefit from only playing in Europa League competitions. That would maximize the possibility of getting the most out of their play.
Van Gaal gets paid a lot of money to make the hard choices at Manchester United. The difficult, but correct, choice for them now is to accept the reality that they can’t achieve anything in the Premier League this season. They must put all of their eggs in the Europa League basket.