The United/Van Gaal Incongruence (aka - why people can't stop talking about them) & A Thing Called Luck

part one - das incongruence

1. THEY'RE WINNING

2. THEY'RE NOT PLAYING WELL

it really does demand an explanation...

Classifications

For a team to fit with our classification of consistent winners, they should possess the very common trait of not playing such obviously terrible football. The incongruence produces cognitive dissonance ('the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values' - credit goes to my erstwhile assistant Wikipedia for that concise, and hopefully accurate, definition). The "idea" is that a team that only loses twice in nineteen matches should be playing much much better than United are. The dissonance is genuinely discomforting. We do much prefer it when we have a classification for a thing, and it conforms to the definition. United do not. This makes us uneasy. Hence we're stuck endlessly discussing them. 

BBBBBBBBut...

United are playing an awful brand of football. "Hope Fellaini wins one of these long balls we punt up to him" is hardly acceptable for a team that has lavished £250m on new players over the past four windows. But, as we've said, this knowledge is discordant with the way the data seems to imply it actually works. If you were out in the middle of nowhere, and all you got was results, you'd think Van Gaal was doing well (well, well-ish at least).  

"People Get What They Deserve"

We inevitably want to reduce the discordance. We want things to be easily classified. We are always trying to avoid effortful thinking, and where discordance is concerned, this is inspired. We have a stereotype - "People get what they deserve" - which we preserve because it makes us optimistic. We think good things about ourselves (almost always; 90% of drivers think they're above average, etc etc), hence we are deserving, so we want to believe deserving people will be rewarded (just like with driving. We think we're good at it, so we can maintain the stereotype that only bad drivers have accidents, and then we don't waste time worrying about having accidents). Essentially, United are getting much more than their play deserves, and we don't really like it. 

So, That's the Unpleasantness...

But what's the explanation? How come they're winning and not playing well? Well, they keep a tight shape (sometimes). They have so much attacking talent, eventually some of it has to do something. No European distractions, so they have a week to prepare for most games. But mainly, David De Gea is absolutely ridiculously, sickeningly good. Even when they lose at home to Arsenal, he makes a save of the season contender or two. Oh, and luck is involved.

part two - "luck"

I Know You Don't Like That Idea Either...

"People Get What They Deserve" is the view of the world we prefer. "People Sometimes Get What They Deserve, but a lot of luck is involved all the time and all over the place" is not such an attractive view of the world. It's much much more accurate, but who cares about that? Luck is important. A great goalie is important. But there has to be luck, always. What if David De Gea dropped a bottle of salad cream on his foot? What if it missed by inches, he goes out and makes another bunch of world class saves? It was lucky either way. What if Burnley did take one of their hundreds of chances at Old Trafford the other week? Suddenly the record is worse. We'd rather believe it was "never going to happen", even though it certainly could have.

The First Three Examples of Luck and Chance Getting Involved That I Can Be Arsed To Think Of...

1. During the war Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkein became ill during the Battle of the Somme, and was invalided home - after he had left most of his battalion died, and he probably would have too. If not for his chance infection, Lord of the Rings would never have existed, and then what would've paid for Elijah Wood's jacuzzi? 

2. On a wholly uninteresting day in June 1914, a young man called Gavrilo Princip was sitting in a cafe mourning his failure to knock off the Archduke of Austria-Hungary (some guy called Franz Ferdinand), when a logistical cock up forced the Archduke's car to stop right in front of him. Princip, who happened to still be armed, got up and shot him. Now sit still and list all the other things that could've happened instead (and then do one for everything that can be plausibly said to have resulted from that chance occurrence). 

3. On November 24, a club owner from Dallas walked into a police station and shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, if some smart sod in the police force had bothered to stop the bloke with the gun walking in and shooting the worlds most notorious criminal in a police station on live television, we'd never have had the Oliver Stone film JFK (which is mainly worth watching for the way Kevin Costner waves his arms about). 
So...
What we're getting at is developing a view of the world that is a bit more "What if the apple hadn't fallen on Mr Isaac Whatsisface's head?", because there are loads and loads of scenarios in which it might never have happened. What if a passing friend hailed him at that moment, and all that ended up happening was Mr Newton going "ooo, delicious apple" and getting a slight vitamin boost (this is something we'd also rather not believe, that the things that have happened were not inevitable - we want to believe the present was inevitable, because it makes it feel more predictable, and we want to believe we can predict the future, because it makes it less terrifying). 

So...

There are all these factors that are beyond Van Gaal's control, and this doesn't mean they don't influence the outcome. That's something else we'd rather not believe - that people often aren't in control of their own destiny, but are at the mercy of others, whose decisions often only inadvertently influence them in the first place...

I've left off because this discussion is really just leading into the next article...

Which will be online at some point...

I have no idea when...