So Louis van Gaal lives to fight another day after negotiating the FA Cup banana skin at Derby, though accepts the pressure and public scrutiny will be just as intense when Stoke City visit Old Trafford in the league on Tuesday. The Dutch coach insists he intends to see out his three-year contract and while that may depend on whether his team can finish in one of the European positions at the end of the season, he only has to stick around for another month or so to be at Manchester United for the same length of time he spent at Bayern Munich.

That may come as a slight surprise, given his fondness for recalling happy days in Bavaria. Van Gaal was widely considered a success at Bayern, but images of him prancing around in lederhosen with the Bundesliga trophy or narrowly missing out on a treble due to the brilliant efficiency of José Mourinho’s Internazionale do not tell the whole story, otherwise he would have lasted longer than 21 months.

The whole story is remarkably similar to the one currently playing out in Manchester. At Bayern, Van Gaal was brought in for his experience after a calamitous attempt to replace a veteran manager with a younger man, in this case Jürgen Klinsmann’s ill-fated attempt to follow Ottmar Hitzfeld. At first, neither he nor his football were popular, but the Bayern chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, told supporters the nasty medicine had to be swallowed. “If we had wanted to sign everybody’s darling we would have gone for George Clooney,” was one memorable soundbite.

Another, towards the end of Van Gaal’s period in charge, was provided by the club president, Uli Hoeness. “Football should be enjoyable, but there has been nothing enjoyable about FC Bayern for a while now,” the former international said.

United fans have been saying the same thing all season and when the former chief executive David Gill admitted he preferred the cinema to watching his team on television because the football was so unattractive, he mirrored Hoeness’s criticism almost exactly.

Yet for all the parallels there are two stark differences between Van Gaal’s spells in Munich and Manchester. One is silverware, for in Germany the Arrogant One (his own words) undeniably confounded his doubters. The other is Hoeness, or rather the contrast between the most powerful man at the German club at the time and the considerably more emollient Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman at Old Trafford.

Hoeness never liked Van Gaal from the start and was not afraid to say so, believing he promoted himself too much at the expense of the team ethos and the club’s good name, a bit like the reservations Sir Bobby Charlton and others seem to have about Mourinho as manager of Manchester United. He doesn’t think he’s God, he thinks he’s God’s father, Hoeness once remarked, prompting Van Gaal to counter, probably with some justification, that the only person with God-like status within the Bayern set-up was the club president.

When the time came to stick the knife into Van Gaal, Hoeness did not hang around. “He’s advice resistant,” he said. “It is difficult to talk to him because he doesn’t respect other people’s opinions.” Explaining the coach’s dismissal in April 2011, Hoeness said: “To say he had the players behind him was a myth, problems were created which were totally unnecessary and which have ripped the club to pieces.”

Returning to the here and now it would be surprising if some, if not most of the United hierarchy have not been thinking along roughly the same lines in recent weeks. Yet with the exception of Gill, who is no longer in a position of authority, no one is breaking cover. Woodward does not really speak out anyway, he just lets it be known unattributably that he is happy for Van Gaal to continue, although happy might not be exactly the right word.

He could have done without Mourinho coming on the market before Christmas and he would doubtless like to see a first-half goal as much as the rest of Old Trafford after 11 consecutive blanks, but he is not to be drawn publicly on either matter. It is fairly clear now that United do not want Mourinho, yet his availability seems to be making the club wary.

Create a vacancy and Van Gaal has all but admitted he is not doing the job very well. Woodward would then either have to bite the bullet or make clear his objections and then find another manager who could be presented to supporters as a better choice.

Perhaps there is a simple explanation for the paralysis that seems to be affecting boardroom as well as bootroom. Perhaps Woodward is waiting for results to improve. That worked for Sir Alex Ferguson, after all, though things have moved on since 1990, winning the FA Cup is not going to make up for missing out on the Champions League.

It even worked for Van Gaal back in December 2009. Miles off the pace in the league, Bayern were on the brink of group-stage elimination when they trailed Juventus 1-0 in Turin and Van Gaal was about to be sacked after less than six months in charge. Instead, the match turned on a first-half penalty; veteran goalkeeper Hans-Jörg Butt took it and scored, Bayern added three more in the second half and never looked back. Not only did they storm the Bundesliga, win the cup and reach the Champions League final in Madrid, but some of the wacky things Van Gaal had been doing all came up trumps. Butt, the penalty-scoring goalkeeper, would not have been playing at all had Van Gaal not dropped the younger Michael Rensing. Switching the stately Bastian Schweinsteiger from wing to holding midfielder turned out to be a masterstroke, as did promoting the inexperienced Holger Badstuber and David Alaba in defence. Van Gaal’s 20-year-old protege Thomas Müller was sensational up front and once Arjen Robben recovered fitness he was as unstoppable as his compatriot always promised he would be.

In the summer of 2010, Bayern believed in miracles yet before the next season was complete Van Gaal was gone. Bayern view him as damaged goods now. United supporters are forming the same opinion without seeing any miracles.

Could a comfortable win at Derby provide the spur? The FA Cup will not suffice if league performances do not improve, though Friday night was a reminder of what an injection of confidence can do for a team. United can still make the top four – they are not too far behind – and can call on some excellent players, they just need to play with more conviction and stop squandering points.

Stoke are never easy opponents, it was following a Boxing Day defeat at the Britannia Stadium that Van Gaal first hinted he might walk away, but if United can manage to put two or three decent performances together their season and their manager might be transformed.

Not to the extent of Bayern Munich in 2009-10 perhaps; it is no longer possible to go from here to the verge of a treble and the competition in England at the moment is probably fiercer in any case. But Van Gaal is not being tasked with winning a treble or even winning the league. Most supporters, and certainly his executive vice-chairman, would settle for rediscovering the team that used to be Manchester United.