I have to admit that it feels somewhat of a surreal headline that was on the official Manchester United website last night which simply said "Van Gaal: Let's Show Swansea We've Improved"
It of course refers to the comments made by their manager at his press conference yesterday where he talked about us being the only side that he didn't manage to take a point off last season and is reflective really of how close these two teams have come in terms of results and play?
When we came into the Premier League five years ago we had a tendency in some games to show teams so much respect but what we are finding now that as we become more established is teams are offering us that (Jose Mourinho excepted of course) and that is a delight to see and read about.
Van Gaal's words were It’s a difficult team against us and before my period it was also difficult for United so I hope we can improve and that we can show that we are better than last year.
"Swansea is a very good team, they play a positional game like we do. They want to build up and have a good attack with speed and creativity."
Man Utd were beaten twice by the Swans last season - Ki and Gylfi scoring at Old Trafford to give us a 2-1 win and Ki and Gomis on target at the Liberty to give the same result and clearly Van Gaal is keen to show us all that his side how much they have improved which for me is a great compliment to Swansea City for what we have achieved.
However, from our point of view of course we will be out to show them that we have improved as well which I think we have. We certainly have shown this season that we have more to our game than we had last season and we know how good that was. The performance against Chelsea was an excellent one and we should have got three points but games like that will worry Van Gaal and he certainly knows that this is the toughest test his side will have experienced so far this season.
And we have to hope that he heads back to Manchester on Sunday with another pointless tally knowing that his side has to improve more!