Even those closest to Ryan Giggs at Manchester United will admit he can be a difficult man to read, somebody well-skilled at keeping his true emotions behind a mask of indifference.
Yet that very mask betrayed a sense of frustration as Louis van Gaal celebrated Ashley Young’s dramatic late winner at Newcastle on Wednesday.
Van Gaal confronting a heckler https://t.co/a0sJE9wMGO
— Nooruddean (@BeardedGenius) March 4, 2015 While the usually calm and studious Van Gaal leapt to his feet, punched the air and then tapped Giggs on the cheek with an ‘I told you we would score’ gesture, the United assistant manager remained stony-faced, staring ahead while the rest of Van Gaal’s staff and players jumped around.
It was as though Giggs was thinking, ‘great, but you got away with it again,’ after United somehow salvaged a crucial victory from a performance marked only by the soporific possession football imposed by Van Gaal in recent weeks.
The green shoots of recovery which emerged in the autumn, when a battling 1-1 draw against Chelsea and 3-0 home win against Liverpool suggested United had found their feet again after the misery of David Moyes’s season in charge, have since disappeared with Van Gaal’s team delivering a series of unconvincing performances while clinging onto a top four position.
Van Gaal, despite seeing Liverpool move to within two points of United having been 10 points adrift on Boxing Day, continues to insist that his philosophy is working and that there is no reason to doubt him.
But United supporters accustomed to the attacking, bold and cavalier football of the Sir Alex Ferguson era are becoming exasperated with the style of play and increasingly concerned that the team’s luck will run out as they prepare for a run of fixtures which includes encounters with Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool within the next fortnight.
And Giggs, appointed as assistant by Van Gaal last summer, is the supporter in the dug-out, the man with United in his soul who knows well enough the concerns of the fans.
When he was named as caretaker-manager last April following the sacking of Moyes, Giggs insisted his first move would be to restore ‘attacking football’ at Old Trafford in place of the nervous, cautious and dismal football played by Moyes.
"Manchester United’s philosophy is to attack," Giggs said at his first press conference in charge and, as the poster boy of the Ferguson era, he could not have said anything else.
Van Gaal insists he also wants United to attack, but the product on the pitch suggests he has a different interpretation of attacking football to Giggs.
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Giggs employed wingers to attack the space down the flanks, challenged his players to look forward and take risks whereas Van Gaal’s approach is based on possession football, patiently awaiting an opening and then finding a way to score.
Following the home win against Leicester last month, Van Gaal made the unusual admission that he wanted his team to ‘play forward without risky passes’ – an instruction which would appear to be in direct conflict with the United approach that Giggs had grown up with.
As Telegraph columnist Gary Neville insisted recently, United supporters must accept that the Ferguson era is over and that the club and team is now facing a different future, with Van Gaal pursuing a different path.
But it is difficult to imagine Giggs being comfortable with the blueprint being imposed by Van Gaal as it is the opposite of the football he enjoyed such success with.
Would Giggs play Angel di Maria on the right rather than his favoured left hand side, as Van Gaal does? Would he deploy Marouane Fellaini as an auxiliary striker while leaving Radamel Falcao on the bench, as Van Gaal did at Newcastle?
Perhaps not, probably not, but Van Gaal’s methods are working and, while that remains the case, the United manager can continue to insist that his way is the right way.
Giggs will make his feelings known and attempt to nudge Van Gaal towards a more expansive, risk-taking approach, but it might require a setback along the way before the Dutchman takes any notice
And maybe that is why Giggs could not crack a smile at St James’ Park after Young scored, because the new way delivered the points again, somehow.
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