A week before the transfer window closed, Louis van Gaal was musing about his mixed inheritance.
“Here the selection is not in balance,” he said. “There are five No 9s and six No 10s and so on.” That was Manchester United, with too many players in some positions and too few in others.
Eight days later, an unbalanced squad became more uneven. By the time Radamel Falcao signed from Monaco, United were top loaded with attacking talent.
They may have fewer strikers, with Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez leaving, but they have more who, in other circumstances, would be automatic choices.
Falcao joins Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney in the striking contingent. Factor in United’s record signings, past and present, in Juan Mata and Angel di Maria, plus the prodigy Adnan Januzaj, and they have a surfeit of superstars.
The former United captain Gary Neville voiced the thoughts of many. “How they get Rooney, Di Maria, RVP, Falcao, Januzaj and Mata into that team I don’t know,” he said.
So Van Gaal’s toughest task may not be winning his first game, but picking his next team. There is no shape that suits all, no configuration where all can be accommodated. In the 3-4-1-2 system the Dutchman has used, it means six men are competing for three positions.
Even in a change of formation, it is a case of four from six. With typical bluntness, Paul Scholes arrowed in on the striking situation.
“There is no way that Van Gaal can play Rooney, Van Persie and Falcao together,” the man who stands third in United’s all-time appearance list wrote in The Independent. “It will have to be two from three and which two it is hard to say as yet.”
It is. United possess the most formidable striking armoury in England. Their achievements are extraordinary.
Falcao has scored 155 goals in his 200 club games for European clubs. Van Persie is the only player since Thierry Henry to win the Premier League’s Golden Boot in successive seasons. Rooney may well take Sir Bobby Charlton’s United and England goalscoring records before his 30th birthday.
Mata, who can operate off a main forward, delivered 20 goals and 25 assists in his last full campaign of first-team football.
There are reasons to believe he will be sacrificed. Some expect a straight shoot-out between Van Persie and Falcao in attack. They may include the Dutchman. “It is up to Falcao to fight for his place, as I have to as well,” he said.
For all Van Persie’s creative capabilities and despite Arsene Wenger’s description of him as “a nine-and-a-half”, the reality is the past few years he was the farthest man forward, whether for United, Arsenal or the Netherlands.
As the shirt he will wear on his United debut indicates, the Colombian is an out-and-out No 9.
One theory is that United want Falcao’s speed to stretch defences in a way that Rooney, Van Persie and Mata do not. Van Gaal described the Englishman as a “fixture” in the team when he awarded him the captaincy; yet with the Colombian’s signing, many think he will be fortunate to retain his place.
One suggestion is that Rooney could drop into midfield.
If that was the plan, then we must wonder why £28.8 million (Dh172m) was spent on Ander Herrera.
Moreover, despite Rooney’s nominal versatility, his fondness for the second striker’s position has been increasingly pronounced; his days as a roving left winger for United ended with Cristiano Ronaldo’s sale to Real Madrid in 2009.
On the few occasions he has reprised the role since, it has been unconvincing.
While Mata prospered as a wide player at Chelsea, he proved ineffective on the flanks for United. He could not shrug off David Moyes’s tactical straitjacket.
Perhaps, under the more flexible Van Gaal, that would not be an issue but Mata covets a central creative role. The Dutchman’s 3-4-1-2 seemed designed to suit the Spaniard and Rooney.
Then United introduced their new galactico policy. They signed the famous rather than plugging the gaps in their squad and broke the British transfer record to sign Di Maria and brought in Falcao.
They did not just complicate a situation. They confused it. Van Gaal highlighted Di Maria’s 22 assists last season as part of the attraction. He described him as a midfielder, but the Argentine is at his most potent nearer the touchline.
His arrival pointed to the three-man defence being jettisoned in favour of 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 but, if Januzaj is condemned to spend the season on the bench, United only have one natural winger.
Either Rooney or Mata would have to be shoehorned into the other winger’s role. At least it would be a suitable system for the selection of four attacking players. The current shape is not.
There were massive gaps in the middle of the pitch in the 0-0 draw against Burnley when Darren Fletcher was the only conventional central midfielder, supposedly assisted by Di Maria and Mata in a rather odd 3-3-2-2 system.
With Herrera fit again and Daley Blind having joined, a more conventional partnership is available to Van Gaal. Logically, he will implement it.
The initial focus will be on the names, not the formation. Out of the League Cup and not in Europe, there can be no pretence that United need to employ squad rotation.
Whoever is benched can consider themselves out of the side.
The issue should be the team. They were less than the sum of their parts last season, when Rooney, Van Persie and Mata formed a mismatched trio. The selfless Di Maria is likelier to develop chemistry with others. The predatory Falcao wants a supply line, but there is no way of accommodating them within the same side.
Something has to give. Someone has to be omitted.
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