Did you know that if Louis van Gaal was given carte blanche to change whatever he wanted about football one of the first things the Manchester United manager would do is introduce a rule to abolish throw-ins?

If Van Gaal had his way – and there are people who have worked with him who are convinced he would happily take up such an offer – he would also like two referees on the pitch, positioned diagonally in each half, no linesmen and a television official, wired up, making offside decisions from the stand. Who would decide when the ball goes out of play is not entirely clear but Van Gaal’s blueprint would certainly shake things up. “A throw-in should be a positive thing but more than half of throw-ins end up with the opponent,” he says. “It’s easy to defend a thrown ball. And it’s a bit weird too. It’s football, so why should we suddenly use our hands? It has to be a kick-in. Then the defending team wouldn’t simply kick the ball out. With a kick-in, we can change the game.”

Head to head: Arsène Wenger’s seven FA Cup clashes against Manchester United Read more

His vision for the future, Van Gaal’s Revolution, was published in Germany’s Kicker magazine in 2010 when he goes on to suggest penalty shootouts should be abolished and replaced by a change to extra-time rules so that each team has to remove a player every five minutes. After 95 minutes, 10 would play against 10. At 100 minutes, nine against nine. Then in the 115th minute the fun would really start and each team would remove three more to make it six on six. If the game were still level at 120 minutes, it would be next goal wins.

As for the prospect of any of this being implemented – well, it’s fair to say Van Gaal wasn’t expecting it to go any further than a waste-paper basket at Fifa headquarters. “That’s a bunch of old men up there. They don’t care about the game, they care about keeping their jobs and offices and expensive budgets. This is the biggest sport in the world and it’s governed by the most conservative people. But they can’t stop me from thinking.”

That brain is always whirring and it can feel almost impertinent sometimes questioning Van Gaal, like taking issue with Phil Mickelson’s chipping or Lewis Hamilton’s clutch control. Yet it has been a strange first season at Old Trafford and it is fair to say a lot of us are still trying to work him out and get a handle on this “ph” word he keeps mentioning. Is it him or is it us? What exactly is this philosophy? And when, realistically, is it going to click and United start looking like a fully functional team again?

It is certainly not easy finding the answers. United, on the one hand, have the third best goals-against column in the league, better than Manchester City. Yet there are other statistics that show David de Gea has been making more saves per game than the goalkeepers at, among others, Hull, Stoke and Crystal Palace. Where would they be without such an exceptional goalkeeper? And what does it say about England’s most successful club that the current team have made more back-passes this season than any other top-division side?

Van Gaal, in keeping with most managers, is reluctant to discuss his tactics in too much detail during press conferences on the basis it tips off the opposition, but I would recommend trying to get hold of an old book, The Coaching Philosophies of Louis van Gaal and the Ajax Coaches, even if it is hardly the kind of publication one might have seen on the shelves of Waterstones since it was published in the Netherlands in 1997. It is barely any thicker than a match-day programme, more of a coaching manual than a typical book, but its co-authors, Henny Kormelink and Tjeu Seeverens from the De Voetbaltrainer magazine, had several years of access to Van Gaal at a time when he was happy to expand on his techniques, right down to the smallest details.

Van Gaal explains, for example, what happens when the opposition have a free-kick within shooting distance and it is an absolute conviction on his part that the usual method of defending these situations is the wrong one. His own method would mean Edwin van der Sar being instructed to stay in the middle of his goal, directly behind the defensive wall, rather than taking up one side in the way that goalkeepers are normally taught. The wall would then leave a crack for Van der Sar to get a clear view and, after that, Van Gaal would trust his goalkeeper not to be beaten.

Did it work? Well, Van Gaal is honest enough to admit it almost backfired a few times early on, mostly because the players in the wall found it odd to be deliberately leaving a gap. Yet Van Gaal refused to revert to more orthodox methods. “It cost us a lot of time,” he says. But he stuck at it – convinced, as always, that he was right and eventually his players worked it out.

Adopting the same tactic at Old Trafford might be all very well when there are times De Gea gives the impression someone could throw a fistful of rice at his goal and he would keep out every grain. Yet it is the passage about what Van Gaal wants from his central defenders that stands out and, remembering this is almost 20 years ago, the reason it leaps off the page is because it is difficult to think I have ever heard the same view being preached anywhere else.

It can certainly feel like a trick of the mind to remember this is José Mourinho’s old mentor when Van Gaal explains that he doesn’t want out-and-out defenders as his centre-backs. “In modern football the two centre-backs have really become the playmakers,” he says. “The No10, behind the strikers, can’t be called a playmaker any more because the space in which he operates is too restricted. Today’s playmakers are to be found in the middle of the back four.”

The point is explained in detail about how he wants a defender-cum-playmaker who can move out of the back to instigate attacks down the middle. “You can no longer deploy the old-fashioned, solid type of defender in these positions,” he continues. “You have to use technically and tactically gifted players.”

Here, perhaps, is the catch. At Ajax, he had Danny Blind and Frank Rijkaard for the role. At Old Trafford, there is Marcos Rojo, Jonny Evans, Chris Smalling or Phil Jones. All are accident-prone. None is particularly gifted on the ball and, in the worst moments, Jones and Smalling are not a great deal more refined than those people who get their kicks galumphing down the side of a hill after a mound of cheese. If part one of the philosophy is that Van Gaal wants his centre-backs to be the most important members of his team, perhaps it should be no surprise we are still waiting for everything to fall into place.

There is more to it than that, of course. Van Gaal has what he calls a Tips test for his players – Technique, Intelligence, Personality and Speed (or Spit if the letters were rearranged for Evans). All the sideways and backwards passing might be grating on the crowd’s nerves but the logic is that keeping the ball means the opposition run further and tire first. Positional play is key and, if everyone does their job properly, the philosophy doesn’t require incredible stamina or athleticism. Van Gaal talks of a system that “trains its players to run as little as possible on the field”.

Convinced? Maybe the time to judge is at the end of the season but it is certainly fair to say it is still very much a work in progress and that, by now, we might have expected much more. Van Gaal, on that front, has had a pretty generous press given the amount of money that has been spent, the lack of charisma in the team and the shift from a quick, high-tempo United to one that can be as slow and frustrating as dial-up internet. The front cover of the last United We Stand fanzine sums it up. It shows someone pushing a red car up a hill. “Right direction,” it says. “Wrong gear.”

Aston Villa 2-0 West Bromwich Albion | FA Cup quarter-final match report Read more

Superheroes cut down in their prime

It was Paul Lake who expressed the wish that newspapers could refrain from calling injured players “crocks” and try to understand, perhaps, how difficult it must be for a professional footballer whose body is repeatedly failing him.

Lake spiralled into full-blown depression during the long run of operations, rehab, comebacks, breakdowns and jarring disappointments that eventually did for his career at Manchester City, aged 27. At one point the police found him looking over a motorway bridge. He was not contemplating jumping but his life was in meltdown and it didn’t help a great deal when City gave him a match-day role at Maine Road to keep him busy, pulling out raffle tickets and fielding off questions from supporters about when he would he back. “Wouldn’t mind your job, Lakey, being paid to do fuck all,” was one memorable comment.

A few years ago, it felt like every other week there was a different injury update about Louis Saha at Manchester United, too. Sir Alex Ferguson questioned whether it was psychological, describing him as suffering “physical sensitivity” and for a while it was Saha’s turn to be subjected to all the old sick-note jibes that were once reserved for Darren Anderton.

Saha couldn’t cope either. He would send Ferguson apologetic text messages that seemed racked with guilt. Before the Champions League final against Chelsea, he tried to hide the fact he was limping from his team-mates. Inside, he was despairing, feeling close to a panic attack. Eventually, he had to pull out a couple of hours before kick-off. In the crowd, he spent the first half crying in his wife’s arms.

Those stories came back after the depressingly inevitable news that Abou Diaby is close to being released by Arsenal. Diaby looked such a wonderful player when he first broke into Arsène Wenger’s team. He had a long stride and he played with his head up, with the mix of strength, mobility and competitive courage that reminded many observers of Patrick Vieira.

Arsenal midfielder Abou Diaby is close to being released. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/Guardian

Instead, his career has been sabotaged by 42 injuries in nine years, most brutally in a challenge with Sunderland’s Dan Smith that fractured his ankle. His last full match in the Premier League was in September 2012 and, though some may imagine it is an easy life, we shouldn’t underestimate what it must be like for a talented, super-fit sportsman to be cut down in his prime.

Ronaldo stutters but his ego never wanes, only waxes

Cristiano Ronaldo has not scored from a free-kick in more than 50 attempts going back over a year and there are people at Real Madrid who are daring to ask whether it is time he should swallow his pride and let Gareth Bale have a go.

Would the Ballon d’Or winner be so humble? Or should we just save time and scratch the idea now? The other story about Ronaldo over the last few days is of him sending his hairdresser to style his waxwork model at Madrid’s Museo de Cera. Just a hunch, but Bale might have to wait another year or so before he gets his turn.