Unless Liverpool decide to be generous, we won't get top four this season. Furthermore, I suspect that if Juande doesn't finish the job at the Lane, someone else will knock us out of the EL in a few weeks anyway. And if Tim is apparently in danger even if we do make top four (his own words), then he'll be dead and buried if we finish the season out of the CL spots and trophy-less.
The best option now is to see out the rest of the season with Tim at the helm before parting ways in the summer, should the likely eventuality of us failing miserably overall come to pass. In the summer, hire Van Gaal, if he's still interested. No more punts on inexperienced young 'uns: they will not get either the support they need to make their ambitious plans work or the respect they require to maintain control over the squad. Hell, they probably won't even get the performances they want from the players, because most of those we have at the moment are...mentally fragile, to say the least. Someone like Van Gaal would appeal to a large section of the fanbase purely by dint of his massive pool of accumulated experience and glittering trophy cabinet, and would survive at least some of the scrutiny directed at the likes of AVB and Tactical Tim. Additionally, his no-nonsense attitude and disciplinarian attitude would undoubtedly prove popular with both the supporters and (if they're wise) the board, who have grown accustomed to seeing either arm-around-the-shoulder approaches that produce moments of brilliance but mainly mental breakdowns, or AVB's group-based management approach that allowed individual players to take cover behind the failure of the team as a whole and probably created a team too reluctant to take responsibility when it matters. Van Gaal would have none of that, and though a few players may complain or even agitate to leave, I suspect at this point that a dose of hard steel would do these rather soft lads the world of good in the long-run. Finally, Van Gaal would undoubtedly garner respect (if not friendliness) from the players themselves, by dint of the clubs he's managed and again, the things he's won, which should make implementing his philosophy easier than at, say, Bayern, where he faced down players that had won a lot of things themselves and thus were reluctant to fully adapt to his methods.
Appoint an experienced, no-nonsense, historically successful manager. Let Lloris and Verts leave, if they want to (let Baldini earn his damn corn and find replacements from Argentina or Serie A). Give Van Gaal (or A.N.Other, if it comes to it) the money he needs: no more scraping around the barrel trying to save five pounds on deadline day. Our net spend has been ridiculously low over the past few seasons, and this rather large sponsorship deal with AIA will only add to the amount of money lying around waiting to be spent. If that means delaying our eternally delayed stadium a bit more, so be it. Prioritize some on-field success, else we'll never get the fanbase and exposure necessary to consistently fill the stadium long-term anyway. Give him a long contract: four years, at least. And no more chopping and changing, if you please: bit hypocritical considering my advocacy of the departure of both AVB and Tactical Tim, but if we do end up getting Van Gaal, we'll have landed a man that has won almost everything there is to be won in Europe, and you don't win all that by being bad at what you're doing. His track record is solid: give him time to add to it. Sell some of the less determined players if there are steelier alternatives available, and for GHod's sake buy a beast of a striker that doesn't go walkabout like Ade, purely to give us the variation across the front-line that we've desperately been waiting for. And above all, give Van Gaal (or Prandelli, or any other experienced bloke we appoint) a lot of slack: if he alienates Lennon, or Dawson, or if the players complain about his methods to the press, or if he rubs the fans up the wrong way, let all that slide. We've spent long enough being prickly about the missteps of our coaches, from Redknapp's belittling of the fanbase to AVB's freezing out of Ade. It's time to give a CL winning manager like Van Gaal all the leeway he needs to prude out the weaknesses in the squad and replace them with steel. Whatever it takes.
Does all that seem impossible? Very probably it does. But we've undone all the progress we made in the Redknapp years by appointing first AVB and then Tim, by selling first Modric and then Bale, by spending the money on first tactically inconsistent players like Siggy and Dempsey and then mentally suspect players like Lamela and Soldado, by scraping and saving for a stadium that looks farther away than ever and then spending on all the wrong buys, by focusing on Europe but then never getting anywhere in it and suffering in the league in a result.
We've Spursed up again. Only big decisions can stop the rot. We need to do the impossible.
Nothing else will do. The time for half-measures and 'let's support the man in charge' is over. Tim has three months, and no more: without a track record to speak of, expecting more than that is foolhardy. Get into the CL and become a Van Gaal: win the EL and become a Van Gaal. If you can't do either, step aside and let the actual man step in.
