Preston North End vs Manchester United match report: Marouane Fellaini keeps a cool head as United stumble to victory

When he arrived to manage Manchester United, Louis van Gaal was described in a host of tabloid headlines as a “Dutch Master”.

At Old Trafford they are still waiting for a masterpiece, a Night Watch or a Girl with a Pearl Earring, a match that will do justice to his CV. This sometimes fraught and often laboured victory over third-division opposition was a kind of painting-by-numbers by an over-coached, often one-paced team whose players sometimes looked afraid to make their own decisions.

Like their last league match, against Burnley, it was an insipid victory. Chelsea, Manchester City and Sunderland would have given quite a lot for that kind of win. As it is, after four unimpressive matches against sides from England’s lower leagues, United face Arsenal in the FA Cup quarter-finals at Old Trafford – which might be the time and the place for Van Gaal to unveil the full depth of his managerial art.

Had the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger been watching, he would have been confident of reaching Wembley once more. Nevertheless, Wenger has long had something of a block when facing United and this was a side that has lost one game in 19 and showed considerable resilience once Scott Laird had put Preston ahead to open up another wildly improbable scenario in this season’s FA Cup.

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Van Gaal’s introduction of Ashley Young turned the game on its head. He even cleared off the line in the final moments when Preston, obviously beaten, kept pressing.

Finally, United possessed some pace and penetration and in the space of seven minutes two midfielders, Ander Herrera and Marouane Fellaini, who have been on the fringes of Old Trafford, broke through.

Preston’s manager, Simon Grayson, who had knocked United out of the FA Cup from the third tier with Leeds, might have thought Rooney impeded his keeper, Thorsten Stuckmann, as Herrera scored. Fellaini then showed strength of thought and body to react when his header was blocked to stab the rebound home.

United could see the finish line now. Preston kept up their harrying attacks but they were exhausted and when Wayne Rooney broke though he was taken out by Stuckmann’s legs. The penalty was emphatically converted; a veneer on this match and another on United’s season.

Van Gaal, “delighted” to have a home draw in the quarter-finals believed it was his team’s best performance of this stumbling cup run.

These clubs had not met since February 1972. Then they were still the Manchester United of Best, Law and Charlton but they were an ageing, bickering team, led by Frank O’Farrell, who like David Moyes, was a decent man who never became used to the size of Old Trafford or the depth of its politics. Manchester United won 2-0 at Deepdale, staggered on to the quarter-finals where they were eliminated by Stoke.

This year’s quarter-final draw, conducted by Sir Tom Finney’s son, Brian, who looked astonishingly like his father and the England manager, Roy Hodgson, generated a vast rolling roar when relayed on Deepdale’s big screen just before kick-off.

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Whoever won would be at home and they would be playing Arsenal. Such has been the surreal nature of this season’s FA Cup that three quarters of this compact, beautifully-designed ground could imagine it might be them.

However, as he likes to remind his audiences during his pre-match lectures – they are not really press conferences – Van Gaal won trophies in his first season at every one of his major clubs. And this year, the FA Cup looks a very winnable piece of silverware.

From the very start Van Gaal has played strong teams in the FA Cup. He did his experimenting in the League Cup at Milton Keynes, saw his team eviscerated 4-0 and made up his mind about a lot of them. Rooney played as a centre- forward. He would have played anywhere for United but he will always be a street footballer taking on his man in front of goal, rather than holding the midfield together as he has done recently.

However, Rooney and Radamel Falcao lack the one commodity defenders, especially League One defenders, fear. Neither possesses real pace.

Rooney had one chance before the interval; a ball played over the top by Falcao but as he brought it down, he was dispossessed by a tackle from Bailey Wright made with the kind of precision Billy Wright would have admired. That was virtually Falcao’s entire contribution to the tie and finally the man who banked another quarter of a million in wages this week was hauled off for Young and United looked immediately more dangerous.

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They had begun determinedly enough but, as so often under Van Gaal, possession was squandered at vital times and the crossing, especially from Angel Di Maria, rarely threatened to penetrate a Preston side that spent most of the match inside their own half. The Argentine produced a free-kick that crackled past Stuckmann’s post but, until the interval, that remained the limit to United’s attacking threat.

Frankly before Laird broke through, Preston had offered little more and then, suddenly, they struck with a speed and precision that United seldom approached. Joe Garner fed Laird and the left-back advanced on goal. Laird, however, is a defender who scored 45 times while at Stevenage and now he shot hard.

It was a drive David De Gea should have saved comfortably. However, the one Manchester United player who has improved since Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure, somehow allowed the ball to wriggle under his body.

Van Gaal has talked plenty about his ‘philosophy’ at Manchester United but, whatever the intricacies of his coaching regime at Carrington, his players would have to score two goals in just under three-quarters of an hour.

They managed three, but were, once again, far from convincing.