Louis van Gaal suffered a major setback in his first match as the Manchester United manager after his team were defeated 2-1 by Swansea. The fact that this match was at Old Trafford only made things worse, as United were focusing on rediscovering their strength at home. Under David Moyes last season, the club lost an incredible seven matches at home with many unfancied teams like West Brom and Aston Villa getting results here. United came on the back of an impressive pre-season during which they failed to win only one match.

However, Van Gaal was rather shocked to see his players perform in an extremely poor fashion against Swansea. Despite having much of the ball for the 90 minutes, they failed to create clear-cut opportunities. It was only through a set piece that they managed to get an equaliser, while Wayne Rooney also hit the bar only from a freekick. The defending was also not up to the standard, as Swansea were easily able to break the back three with a very intelligent runs. Van Gaal will be aware that this 3-5-2 formation will come under criticism if results not improve, but former United striker Michael Owen says that the Dutchman is not the kind of manager to change his philosophies because of criticism.

“Everybody has been talking about the new Manchester United formation, and how it is going to suit them. It was abandoned after only half of the game, so a lot of people have come to conclusions about that. But it was successful in pre-season. I know people say pre-season doesn’t matter and you can get easy games, but Manchester United had some pretty tough games to play, not least against the likes of Liverpool. So I wouldn’t have thought Louis van Gaal will be abandoning it just yet,” said Owen.