Louis van Gaal did not overplay the point because the Premier League table can do it for him. When Manchester City kick off at Crystal Palace on Monday evening the champions will have spent 48 long hours stewing over being demoted to fourth place after this fifth consecutive Manchester United league victory.
The 20-times champions now have 62 points, the current ones 61. Van Gaal pointed out this will count for far more if City fail to leapfrog back over United but the Dutchman did agree starting the game against Palace below their fierce rivals will cross City players’ minds.
“Of course it plays a part in the spirit of the players – of our opponents also,” he said, emphasising how any advantage can help before next Sunday’s 169th Manchester derby. “Also our players: we have more confidence now and when they lose a point against – I believe Crystal Palace – then it’s also sitting in the minds, so maybe it plays a role. But that is dependable of the individual player and I don’t know the individual players of Manchester City so well. I cannot judge. It’s relevant after Monday night [if] they have lost points but still the next game [the derby] is the decisive game.”
Four years have passed since United last defeated City at Old Trafford in the league, a 2-1 win sealed by a sublime Wayne Rooney volley. In this canter of a victory over Aston Villa he fashioned a similar finish, somehow turning and rocketing the ball home from a height that appeared impossible to add yet another to his collection of spectacular goals. This made it 2-0 and the contest apparently over following the opener from Ander Herrera, a 43rd-minute strike that drew a Van Gaal embrace for heeding advice to “control the ball before you shoot”. Van Gaal said. “I kissed him at half-time because he had controlled the ball for the first time in his life and he shot.”
Yet despite the two-goal cushion, a second David de Gea mistake in as many matches allowed Villa the sniff of an unlikely comeback within 60 seconds of Rooney scoring. The Spaniard should not have allowed Christian Benteke’s 80th-minute attempt to squirm underneath him but did. So, just as at Liverpool a fortnight before when De Gea failed to prevent a Daniel Sturridge effort, United were pulled back to 2-1 and had been given an unwanted wake-up call.
Herrera, though, sealed a deserved three points in the 90th minute with his second goal to make it four in his last eight appearances as the 25-year-old finally begins to establish himself in Van Gaal’s strongest XI. Might Herrera also be making himself a candidate to fill the dominant-midfielder deficit that has hobbled United in recent seasons?
“He develops himself very good,” said Van Gaal. “He’s more composed with the ball, positionally he is playing better than in the beginning. So he develops and he scores goals – it’s very important because when you can score seven goals [all season] and you don’t play regularly, then who can do it better than him as a midfield player?”
British football’s most expensive player, the £59.7m Ángel Di María, again failed to make the lineup as Van Gaal made only the enforced change of starting Marcos Rojo in place of the unwell Chris Smalling from the team that had defeated Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur in the previous two outings.
Di María made an impact, though. It was his cross from that set up Rooney and, asked if Herrera and the resurgent Juan Mata can inspire Di María to fight his way back into the team, Van Gaal said: “Yes, of course because I am the manager and I have to decide and that’s not always easy, especially when you have very talented players but you have to show it in the match and when it is not like that then I change. Now we are winning five games in a row, so everybody has to wait for the right moment.”
A sixth victory on the bounce would mean a first league win over City at Old Trafford since that match of the Rooney volley in February 2011. “It’s like the game against Liverpool and the game against Chelsea – you have to win these kinds of matches,” the manager said. “Against Arsenal [in the FA Cup], for example, we don’t lose any games at home and then we lose a game at home – it always can happen.”
Man of the match Ander Herrera
