Louis van Gaal can charm you with his musings on the game we all love to muse on.

He’s a philosopher before he’s a coach, and someone who will delight in educating you on football. You can imagine him down the pub enlightening his mates on the intricacies of the false nine, telling them the benefits and detractions of the inside-out winger, and whether the full-backs should overlap or not.

It’s little wonder that a man with this level of devotion to the game and how it should be played should be branded a purist. We seem to think that when a coach demands that his teams pass the ball around, keep it on the ground and try to work openings through working the ball and movement off it, that he likes to play beautiful football. The beautiful game played the beautiful way.

We picture a Pep Guardiola, a man who tells his players that the ball must do the work. The ball must be the star because, let’s face it, it can travel much faster than any other player on the pitch.

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But that’s not what we get from van Gaal. He might be a purist in some sense, but United fans will attest to the fact that this season hasn’t seen much beautiful football at Old Trafford.

The truth is that van Gaal tries to see the game as a whole. Attacking is a form of defending, and defending is a form of attacking.

Usually, you’d think that would lead to a strong attack and a leaky defence. After all, if you’re defending with the intention of launching a counter-attack, then it’s more likely you’ll be set up in a way that often tries too hard to win the ball and leaks goals. But equally, you’d expect to score more - what’s the point of using your defenders to set up attacks if you don’t then try to score?

But ironically, United have a great defensive record and a poor attacking one. Manchester City have scored nine goals more than United so far this season in only 12 games. Yet United have the best defence in the league. So clearly there’s something going right, it’s just not the bit you’d expect it to be.

Because United have so much possession, they’re in attack more than they’re in defence. But because their attack is so keenly focused on not losing the ball, playing away the risk inherent in attacking the opposition, United’s attack becomes stagnant and sterile, it misses opportunities to be bold, players get stagnant and lose their ability to just go for.

The defence, meanwhile, is amply protected. But the attack is stymied. It is unable to do what should be its primary job - breaking down defences - because it is now saddled with a different job. The new job is to be cautious, to make sure the passes go to feet, to make sure that if you lose the ball, you lose it out wide, negating the possibility for a counter attack.

But if you err on the side of caution, and you only give the ball away near the corners or in wide areas, then you never have the ball where you need to get it in order to win the game - near the goal.

Van Gaal treats football like chess. He wants to win, but protecting his King is also important. But you can’t control the whole board. Sometimes you have to cede power in some areas to grab extra power in other areas.

Manchester United are a club for the purists who hired a manager who - given his credentials - should really be a good fit for a purist club. But van Gaal hasn’t brought the beautiful game to United. He’s brought boredom with a rare diamond of brilliance.

Van Gaal has inverted Manchester United. Defence is now attack, attack is now defence. And beauty is now secondary to the cautious defence of the King.

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