Louis van Gaal pledges to give more opportunities to youngsters

Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal maintains his side’s attacking difficulties are not a “big issue”, stating his confidence that they will rediscover their finishing touch against Wolfsburg this week.

The Germany captain donated a signed shirt for an auction at last week’s UNICEF dinner at Old Trafford and Louis van Gaal has revealed it sparked a bidding war among the United players.

For United to reach the last 16 in Europe they must match the result PSV Eindhoven manage at home to CSKA Moscow, the bottom team in Group B.

Schweinsteiger feels United deserved to beat the Hammers but concedes his colleagues missed too many important chances to score, particularly in the second half.

“The team that had to score was Manchester United and not West Ham, but they also could have scored, we could have lost also, and this is the wonderful game of football”.

Ferguson, who performed an about-turn in February 2002 to remain in position, has spoken at great length about the problems that his announcement created in the United dressing room with players switching off due to his pending departure. “That’s our problem”, said Van Gaal, as he stated the obvious once more.”[If I understand the fans’ frustration?] Yes and no, because they can see that we fought until the end”. I hope we can improve.

“I’m happy with my squad now but we can strengthen the selection still in (certain) positions, for example, the left-back position is not so (well) covered”. The boardroom view is that the criticism has been overplayed and that it is satisfactory for now that Van Gaal has re-established the club as credible title challengers. That’s always hard but we created a lot of chances.

But United are acutely aware that the search for a new manager will take time and do not want to go into the 2016-17 season without a clear idea of the Dutchman’s intentions. But you can’t score every chance and when you see how many players get chances in our team it’s not a fixed person.

West Ham twice hit the post and had one-on-one chances for both Victor Moses and Mauro Zayate as they threatened to add a victory at Old Trafford to the away wins they have enjoyed at Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City this season.

“I don’t think that we are able to win the Champions League now”, he said.

“But Bayern also won there 6-1”.

Schweinsteiger has mixed memories of playing at Wolfsburg with Bayern.

‘It is not just today but in every game.

“On another day, we would have punished them, but when you dominate like we did, we should be taking the three points”.