OPINION: United’s Chronic Lack of Balance Reflects Poorly on Both Woodward and LVG

When he took over last season, van Gaal complained about the lack of balance in the United squad. It was probably true, but the question must be asked, are we more or less balanced now than 12 months ago? In my opinion, whilst we have signed some quality players, we are less balanced than we were. In Carrick, Schweini, Schneiderlin and Herrera, we now have 4 players who all perform somewhat similar roles, yet we basically don’t have a striker who can score.

We are becoming a laughing stock in the transfer market – who knows if not signing Pedro was a big mistake, but I don’t believe anything that is coming out of Old Trafford right now. In my eyes, we wanted to sign him and Woodward clearly failed to get the deal done.

We have sold Di Maria and RVP, and terminated Falcao. What have we replaced these 3 supposedly world class players with? Memphis, who will be a top player but is undoubtedly a work in progress, and no one else. Where’s the balance in these decisions?

We have absolutely no conviction in the 18 yard box, with nobody looking like an obvious goal threat. Whilst Rooney’s offside goal today should have stood, we still had 89 minutes to find another one and we failed miserably.

It’s not good enough, both in the transfer market and on the field. Unless a prolific striker is signed this week, I can see it being a long, somewhat boring season, scrapping with the Scousers for 4th place again, and being eliminated early from the Champions League. Should that be the case (and of course I hope it’s not) then surely the owners will not give LVG another truckload of cash to spend going into his final season. The sooner United get with modern football and appoint a Director of Football to conduct transfers, the better.

Whilst we achieved the goal last season of finishing top 4, the evidence so far this season is we won’t be doing any better.