Louis van Gaal insists that he is chasing balance in the Manchester United formation, but has changed it around too much since his arrival this summer.
Van Gaal began with a 3-5-2 but has since changed to 4-2-3-1 and, in the 1-0 win against Crystal Palace this weekend he reverted to 4-1-4-1. Injuries have played their part as Daley Blind was forced to drop back to play at centre-back, but the veteran Dutch coach revealed that he needs to get some consistency going.
"It's too much [change to formation] I think, I agree," he told reporters. "But I'm looking for the balance and when you see the last four matches, we have had more balance because we haven't conceded many goals.
"Nevertheless, we don't score so much. With the other system, we scored a lot of goals."
One of Van Gaal's concerns comes with where to play 59.7 million summer signing Angel Di Maria, who has struggled of late after scoring three goals in his first four appearances for the club.
The Argentina winger was not his usual self in the win over Palace and Van Gaal thinks that his star man needs to adapt his style of play.
"He has played today in a very small space and he is a dribbler but sometimes you cannot dribble," he said. "You have to make it a pass game, and Di Maria is not a player who wants to give a pass every time he gets the ball.
"But in this case we needed that and not dribbles. Therefore he lost the ball a lot of times and that was not good for the balance of the team.
"Of course, we need to raise our level. It's a matter of time but it's also a matter of getting over a lot of injuries."