Manchester United might be third in the Premier League currently and although they have gotten decent results over the past few games, Louis Van Gaal still has not been able to unlock the potential of the players or the team. He has tinkered with the side to get the right formation and now with playing 3 centre backs and having a couple of wingbacks it seems that the Dutch tactician has got something of a set team formation for all the games that Manchester United play.
There is one major problem in the works, they are not playing well and have been lucky to get a few results going their way but more importantly a lot of injuries have hampered the season for Manchester United this season. As soon as you expect the team to have everyone fit, some player does get injured and is out from the team for quite a while and a similar thing happened at Yeovil in the FA Cup.
Different competition, same story
Rafael Da Silva and Luke Shaw were both injured in the 2-0 over Yeovil in the FA Cup, they were substituted at half time and the wingbacks will be missing in action when United take on Southampton on the 11th of January in the Premier League.
Louis van Gaal has used this new formation with the wingbacks to good effect at least in terms of results and the latest injuries will have scuppered a few plans for the Red Devils but that is why Louis Van Gaal is here, he is being paid the big bucks to deal with such headaches.
How will they line up?
It seems that every wingback option for United is injured or doubtful for the clash against the Saints. Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia are also major doubts for the game although they have been the two players who have had a revival in their Manchester United career thanks to being deployed as wingbacks, so the real question is how will Manchester United deal with this and line-up against the Saints?
Louis Van Gaal probably will not change his formation and will continue playing 3 central defenders with a couple of wingbacks, although his first choice of wingbacks are injured, he could play Adnan Januzaj as the left wingback, he did the same in the second half versus Stoke but he wasn’t really impressive and got bullied by Walters throughout the game.
They also have Angel Di Maria back and he could also do the job as he does have a bundle of energy running up and down the wings. However both players don’t actually provide that much defensive help, it could also be that Smalling or Jones play as one of the wingbacks and Di Maria or Januzaj plays as the other to provide some balance and protection defensively. It will be interesting to see just who lines up as the wingback for United.