Manchester United’s players and manager Louis van Gaal “look bored” and are “going through the motions”, says the club’s former midfielder Paul Scholes.<\/p>\n
Van Gaal’s side laboured to a 1-0 FA Cup third-round win over Sheffield United – failing to score a first-half goal for the 10th home match in a row.<\/p>\n
“There just seems to be an acceptance of bad performances,” Scholes, 41, told BT Sport.<\/p>\n
“Every time you come to Old Trafford you see negative football.”<\/p>\n
Manchester United are fifth in the Premier League but have scored just 12 goals in 10 home matches.<\/p>\n
By the time Wayne Rooney netted an injury-time winner from the penalty spot against the Blades, thousands of fans had already left the stadium in what appeared to be a show of disapproval. Their team did not register a shot on target until the 69th minute, and that was greeted with ironic applause.<\/p>\n
“I think even Van Gaal on the bench looks bored, but he’ll come out and say he’s happy.<\/p>\n
“People need digging out sometimes. You need to make something happen.”<\/p>\n
While Van Gaal’s side avoided a replay thanks to Rooney’s late penalty, Scholes said the performance was unacceptable.<\/p>\n
“They didn’t create a chance and had to win a game against a League One side with a penalty in the 94th minute,” said the former England midfielder, who made 718 appearances for United.<\/p>\n
“In my eyes it’s not good enough.”<\/p>\n
Van Gaal, who has been criticised by fans for his possession-based approach, defended United’s performance.<\/p>\n
“It’s always difficult to play against such an opponent with 10 or 11 players behind the ball,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s more easy to defend than attack and at the end we got the penalty but it was a deserved penalty.<\/p>\n
“We won this match and that’s the most important thing.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester United’s players and manager Louis van Gaal “look bored” and are “going through the motions”, says the club’s former midfielder Paul Scholes. Van Gaal’s side laboured to a 1-0 FA Cup third-round win over Sheffield United – failing to score a first-half goal for the 10th home match in a row. “There just seems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}