West Ham United boss Sam Allardyce feels Manchester United are paying for competing in the Champions Cup in preseason.
Allardyce wrote in the London Evening Standard: "I was delighted for Karl Robinson, one of the best young managers outside the Premier League, but certainly felt no pleasure about United's demise.
"Louis van Gaal has a job on his hands but I'm sure he knows that. Whether he is only just realising the magnitude of his challenge, only he could tell you.
"The big problem for Van Gaal was that, after his involvement with Holland at the World Cup, he really didn't have any time at all to work on the training ground with his players because the club went immediately to the United States.
"When they were there it wasn't about training - just playing games. It went quite well for them out there, of course, because they won the tournament and he might have thought it wasn't too bad. That tournament, though, almost decimated his team and the same thing happened to David Moyes a year earlier."
