Louis van Gaal embarrassed himself in his press conference on Friday, incorrectly claiming that David de Gea has never won the Premier League, despite winning it in 2013, and that Wayne Rooney has only won it once, despite winning it five times.

Ahead of Sunday’s game against Leicester, we are 17 points behind, and Van Gaal was asked how far short he had fallen of expectations this season.

We are still in the first five, last year we were in the first four. So the difference in points is not bigger than with Chelsea I believe so it is not a question for us. The question for us is to qualify ourselves and when the fourth position is OK, then we have reached our aim, but we have a final to play in the FA Cup so we have also pluses.

He was also asked that, after finishing fourth last season, whether he expected more progress this season that what we’ve seen.

When you see the circumstances, we are in more or less the same position, but last year we didn’t play as many matches. We’ve played a lot of matches. I think only Manchester City and Liverpool have played more. We are one of the latest clubs in three competitions so we have played more matches. In spite of injuries we are still there, so I don’t think you can say we haven’t played on a certain level. We have played some fantastic matches but we have also played lousy matches. But I think every club has played lousy matches.

His final question was whether it was embarrassing for clubs like ours, Chelsea and Arsenal to fall so far behind Leicester, and the manager was fairly confrontational with that journalist.

No, it’s sport. It is sport. But you are probably not a sportive human being. Every press conference there’s negative questions, so I don’t think you’re sportive.