Louis van Gaal believes Manchester United had a very good 2015 until December, and is targeting the Premier League title in 2016.
After a run of four defeats in five games, United are sixth in the Premier League and have been knocked out of the Champions League.
But Van Gaal believes much of the calendar year has been a success, with United achieving his first target by finishing fourth last season to secure a return to the Champions League.
He was happy with their start to the current campaign before a sequence of eight games without a win left them nine points off the top of the Premier League and sent them into the Europa League.
Van Gaal said in a news conference: "I think we have fulfilled the wish and our aim in the first season, and that ends in 2015.
"After that, we have managed to give balance to the team and that resulted in October and November [when] we were first in the Premier League.
"Then we are out of the Champions League and that gives us a big blow. So when you don't assess December, 2015 was a very good year -- but you cannot do that because a year has 12 months."
Van Gaal has won league titles as manager of Ajax, AZ Alkmaar, Barcelona and Bayern Munich and holds out hope of a repeat with United, despite their recent slump.
But he admitted his team, who host Swansea on Saturday, need to get results soon or it will be impossible to regain the title.
He added: "We need to win because we want to be, at the end, at the top of the league and not in the middle of the league, so we have to win and we have to get points otherwise the gap is too big."