Wayne Rooney to Miss Two Games With Ankle Injury

Van Gaal has come under fire this season for his conservative tactics and United’s subsequent failure to play the kind of entertaining football that was their hallmark during the Alex Ferguson era.

Quitting would not entitle him to compensation from the club, but the 64-year-old insists that he would not hang around waiting for the axe if his troops turned against him.

“We obviously have experience of coming up through the leagues and we have players that have come through to this level”, Monk told his pre-match press conference.

“I have already given the players two days off this week”.

“I’m happy that when I’m gone, people are saying nice things about me but the most important thing is not always that”.

Third-place Manchester United could be forgiven for having their thoughts elsewhere as they gear up for today’s home game against West Ham United.

Their Champions League pool campaign concludes with Tuesday’s visit to Wolfsburg, who they will replace at the summit of Group B with a win.

And that would be an especially sweet moment for England global Vardy, who grew up a fan of Sheffield United’s arch rivals Sheffield Wednesday.

“The week after next we have two weeks that we can have more recovery”, he added.

Van Gaal is facing a crunch run of games that will have a defining impact on his season as he looks to bring the good times back to Old Trafford.

United fans have occasionally shown their displeasure by booing the team’s dour performances and even more worrying for van Gaal, it has been reported that several players are unhappy with his tiresome style.

Apart from Rooney, other players in the squad are also injured.

United’s injury problems are causing all sorts of problems but Rooney’s absence isn’t one which should hurt us, at least in the short term.

“We are looking, but as you know it is not so easy to buy players and in January it is more hard”.

“But now the results are reasonable or maybe very good and now sometimes they shout “attack, attack, attack”, but we are attacking 70 per cent of the time because we have the ball”. He always has them well organised and he plays always more or less from out of the defensive organisation. “We are unlucky I have to say”.