TERRACE TALK: Man United - Players becoming ‘Van Gaaled’

Do you immediately know what is meant by the phrase ‘Olympiakos moment’? I suspect you may well do — especially after United’s catastrophically awful display at Anfield on Thursday, when the fateful words sprang to many a Red lip.

For the remaining uninitiated, it speaks of the 2014 evening in Greece when the United board secretly decided poor David Moyes would have to be sacked, with only the exact timing to be determined.

Moyes plodded on, blissfully unaware, for several further weeks, and even enjoyed a couple of excellent victories before Goodison Gotterdammerung enveloped him.

Was last Thursday Louis’ ‘Olympiakos moment’, then?

There were some who spoke to board members that night who came away convinced that it was.

One senior board director in particular was described, to me, as being “furious” with yet another gutless display, the telling detail being that he has been a 100% Woodward man, always ready to bullishly big up Ed’s managerial choice.

As for the players’ private opinions, one very senior pro made a revealing comment to a snout shortly after Rashford exploded into the team.

The player asserted that some of the lads had advised the young hotshot to ignore whatever LVG might tell him about how to play.

“Don’t let him get inside your head” was the watchword. (Neil Custis of The Sun would later in the week amusingly describe how players can get sucked in and become ‘Van Gaaled’ if they’re not careful, a process that robs them of their imagination, flair and self-confidence.)

Ryan Giggs’ coaching and dressing room behaviour, however, received nothing but praise from the whispering star.

I thought of all the above as we endured yesterday’s second half, and comforted myself with it after we inevitably went a goal down, which was all that our wretchedly witless display thitherto deserved.

Slumping to a defeat would at least hasten the day of Dutch departure, after all.

Then up pops Anthony Martial, one of those very players in imminent danger of becoming Van Gaaled, to score the equaliser, set Old Trafford alight, and offer Louis yet another straw at which to pathetically clutch.

A dispassionate objective observer who doesn’t understand football might have interjected that we wouldn’t have known whether to laugh or cry.

But, of course, we laugh, and we sing, and we do the giddy-goat.

‘Late equaliser’ is the second most lovely phrase in the English language, after all.

So this momentous week, that was threatening to go off the rails right at the outset, clings onto the tracks until Thursday at least.

Three competitions, three old rivals, three potential disasters— and we’ve barely escaped alive from the least challenging and least important of the trio.

It doesn’t bode well, to put it mildly, and one struggles to think of anything we have seen in the past few matches that might give us any hope of troubling Liverpool and City.

But then one does think of Martial and Rashford’s lingering un-Van Gaaled ability to do the unexpected and uncoached. And a flame of hope still burns— just.

If, by some miracle, United overturn Liverpool’s lead on Thursday, it would constitute the greatest such achievement at Old Trafford in 32 years: even Fergie never achieved its like.

And off the back of any such once-in-a-generation sensation, you’d put your house on a euphoric United beating whoever turned up next.

This time next week, dear reader, we could be toasting the greatest 100 hours we’d have had since, since...well, you pick your own, pal: mine’s a youthful stopover with a Finnish air hostess.

I know, I know: it’s an almost ludicrously inconceivable prospect, isn’t it?

Then again, I’ve been drinking, so I can currently imagine most things.

Bar wishing LVG another season in charge, of course. I may be a partial drunk, but I’m not a complete idiot...