British record signing Di Maria impressed on debut but a 0-0 at promoted Burnley left his manager accepting the Reds are a long way from their glory days.<\/p>\n
Angel Di Maria, who cost more than Burnley have spent on players in their entire history, lasted just 70 minutes on his debut.<\/p>\n
And his Manchester United boss Van Gaal went away to blow another big chunk of the Glazer fortune \u00adbefore the window shuts at 11pm on Monday.<\/p>\n
A goalless draw at Turf Moor leaves United with just two points from three Premier League games to go along with midweek League Cup \u00adhumiliation at MK Dons.<\/p>\n
Di Maria \u2013 the marquee signing from Real Madrid who fans were demanding \u2013 failed to inspire a first victory of the Dutchman\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n
And afterwards Van Gaal admitted his United were a long way from being the world-beaters of old.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI think that in the first half we were the same as Burnley, fighting, and I think we have to play the ball against teams like Burnley \u2013 we did that much better in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe created many more chances in the second half, but then you have to score out of those chances and we didn\u2019t do that, so it\u2019s a disappointing result.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this moment it is certainly not a world-class team. But we have to wait and have a belief in it, a belief that it shall happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have two out of nine points it\u2019s not enough for Manchester United.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Gaal will add Daley Blind to his squad \u2013 the Dutch star just has to pass his medical after flying in on Saturday \u2013 and will step up his \u00adpursuit of Juventus midfielder Arturo Vidal and Sporting Lisbon\u2019s William Carvalho.<\/p>\n
Di Maria produced two or three fine \u00admoments to give the \u00adtravelling United fans a glimpse of what they can expect when he is fully fit.<\/p>\n
But even his \u00admanager appreciated that the Argentinian was well off the pace before being \u00adreplaced by Anderson 20 minutes from time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British record signing Di Maria impressed on debut but a 0-0 at promoted Burnley left his manager accepting the Reds are a long way from their glory days. Angel Di Maria, who cost more than Burnley have spent on players in their entire history, lasted just 70 minutes on his debut. And his Manchester United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4718"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4725,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4718\/revisions\/4725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}