It's never easy being a manager newly arriving in the Premier League at the start of the season, especially as the previous incumbent of the managerial hot seat has probably left things a little chaotic. With all eyes on you and little time to make your mark, it's vitally important to make a strong start to the new campaign. This season saw the arrival in England of two highly regarded Dutch managers with similar backgrounds: Louis van Gaal at Manchester United and Ronald Koeman at Southampton. Both men enjoyed success in Holland, each winning multiple titles as manager of Ajax, in between which Koeman served as assistant manager to Van Gaal in a successful two year spell at Barcelona. More recently Koeman took over from Van Gaal after the latter had won the 2009 title with AZ Alkmaar, while his Feyernoord team provided a number of players for Van Gaal's squad at this summer's World Cup. Both have inherited teams that needed plenty of rebuilding, with the 2013 champions floundering last year under David Moyes and the South coast club suffering the loss of chairman Nicola Cortese, inspirational manager Mauricio Pochettino and five key players all in the space of a few months. The pundits' pre-season consensus suggested Van Gaal, off the back of a successful World Cup campaign guiding the Dutch to the semi-finals and given an essentially unlimited transfer budget, would be likely to restore United to their former glory, while Koeman, with the backbone of last year's successful team ripped out, would soon be fighting a relegation battle. However, just over a month into the season Koeman's Saints are flying high in 2nd place. Their mid-week win over Arsenal in the Capital One Cup was their fifth win in a row and sets up a very winnable last 16 tie against Stoke. Meanwhile, Van Gaal and United have managed just one win, against a terrible looking QPR, and find themselves a lowly 12th on top of a 4-0 Capital One Cup humiliation in Milton Keynes. How have the two former colleagues ended up with such opposing fortunes? These five issues may point to the reason.
