Manchester United completed their final signing beyond the deadline as Colombian international Radamel Falcao became their 7th arrival of the window.

It’s Louis van Gaal’s first season managing in the Premier League and after 4 matches in all competitions, he is still without a win. He has decided to combat this poor start with words about how it will take time to get this side back to lofty heights of Sir Alex’s reign.

van Gaal has attempted to speed up this process by spending more money than any other Premier League boss. The Red Devils have splashed no less than £170million of which £20million is to secure Falcao for just a year-long-loan. Bizarrely Manchester United didn’t sign a centre-back, which seemed the most obvious weakness in the squad but instead van Gaal managed to spend £60million on three left sided defenders.

It seems to me that Manchester United have tried to buy themselves out of trouble, but it is only two seasons ago that Sir Alex managed to win the title by an 11 point margin in his final season in football management. The two most influential players that season were Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie – two players who have been ever present in both David Moyes’ short stint and in the early days of van Gaal’s regime. Apart from those two, there was nothing particularly special about that squad apart from Sir Alex, and it took for him to retire for us all to realise just how much he was contributing to the club.

David Moyes’ most used eleven was pretty much identical to that of Sir Alex’s in his final league winning season but Man United managed to drop down to seventh place and accumulate 25 fewer.

After such a lacklustre start to the season, even with big money signings of Luke Shaw, Ander Herrera, and Angel di Maria all playing small parts, the problem must be deeper than purely squad quality. A simple way of putting this is that with the greatest of respect to Swansea City and Aston Villa, there are not many of United’s current squad who would struggle to walk straight into either of the aforementioned starting line-ups, yet both have got off to fantastic starts and confidence is evidently high.

I think the problem lies with the previous structure being completely in Sir Alex Ferguson’s perfect mould. He spent over a quarter of a century building the squad, selecting the youth players from birth to first team and everything about Manchester United was to his specification. It’s then bound to be difficult when the change comes and suddenly everything changes, and it does have to change because each manager is different. The coaching staff changes, the team selection changes, the philosophies change. Effective change is a gradual process and when everything changes your bound to go backwards before you can move forwards again.

It’s the price you pay for staying loyal to a manager over a long period of time and Arsenal fans almost certainly have this to look forward to when Arsene calls it a day. Arsenal is all about Arsene, from the passing football philosophy to the production of the young stars coming through the club. The immediate future that follows Arsene will not be as good as it is now, but sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards.

Sir Alex had a tough time to begin with. David Moyes most certainly did, and Louis van Gaal will have as rough a ride as his predecessor but Manchester United must embrace the tough times to get back to the ‘old times’, as sometimes going backwards is the only way to go forward again.

One thing is for sure, David Moyes didn’t deal with the situation as well as he should have and the United supporters need to see that the manager is aware that any change won’t be immediate, and van Gaal certainly seems to share that view.

My message to Manchester United fans is to be patient as you’ll certainly be back amongst the big boys soon, and you’ll pass Arsenal on the way up.

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