I think that the board want us to get back to a place of stability after the Ferguson era and also that they recognise that there is a lot of work to do. I think we have a lot of catching up to do since there are probably some aspects of the club that have stagnated. We had no need to improve them while Ferguson was overachieving with what he was given.

With him gone (and with it clear that like-for-like replacement was a horrific idea) we need to restructure how we do things. I think that van Gaal was brought in to oversee the restructure period. Essentially, his remit was in my opinion:

• to completely restructure the squad with an emphasis on youth, so that the next manager has something to build on.
• to begin a club style à la Barcelona/Swansea - this makes the job easier for the next manager if he shares similar ideas, it also means that we don't lurch from style to style and manager to manager (and hopefully as a result crisis to crisis) like, say, Chelsea. While his style is boring, I think it should be recognised that with another manager's tweaks it could become much less so (see Barcelona and Bayern who both built on van Gaal's work).
• to try to improve results from the Moyes period so that we do not spend a prolonged period of time outside the Champions League, heavily damaging our reputation. This is arguably also a reason for the extremeness of his style since it undoubtably improves our defence, thus improving results.

All of these are long-term views (even the short-term results aim is mostly important because of the long-term damage it could cause) and I agree that this is how we should be thinking now. Until November he was succeeding with flying colours (at the stated aims, I recognise that they may not coincide wth everyone's opinions of what United's aims should be). Things have gone so incredibly badly recently that there is a very difficult decision to be made at board level. Do they scrap all their plans and essentially commit to gambling on a new manager and heavy investment every couple of years (like Chelsea)? Do they sack van Gaal and try to appoint a manager who can build on what he's done? Guardiola would of course be perfect but if he's not available then who? Can Giggs do this? Or do they stick with him given that for 17 months he has done everything they've asked but the one month has been bad enough that it might undo everything since losing the CL place for too long could be a crippling blow (see Liverpool)? It's not a decision that should be taken lightly because it's possible that some of the more reactive options (Mourinho) could improve things for a little while but then leave us stranded in a couple of years.