Man Utd Continue Handy Knack of Winning Despite Not Playing Well vs. Southampton

Three shots, two on target. They are not the statistics of a team that has played well. But yet two goals from Robin van Persie handed Manchester United a 2-1 win over Southampton at St Mary's on Monday night.

It was their fifth straight win and moved them up to third in the Premier League table, five points behind Manchester City and eight behind leaders Chelsea. They are the only statistics that really matter.

Louis van Gaal is searching for a performance from his players—one to ignite the season like Bayern Munich's 4-1 win over Juventus did in December 2009 during the Dutchman's spell in Germany.

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More than five months and 15 games into his reign at Old Trafford and he is yet to find it. But where United weren't playing particularly well and losing games at the start of the season, now they are finding a way to win. They've done it against Crystal Palace, Arsenal and Stoke in the last month. And it's a good quality to have.

Gary Neville said United had "got away with murder" as he summed up their display on Sky Sports. Van Gaal didn't go quite that far but admitted in his post-match press conference that too many of his players were "not good."

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When you are the better team you deserve more but believe me it is always the goals that count.

When we played the first six or seven matches of the season and we never won but were always the better team, I didn’t say anything about that at that time.

It is fantastic to be now third in the table but I had hoped we would have done that with a better performance because we were the lucky team.

There is a range between good and bad but they were not good. Normally you have six, seven eight players who are good and about three who are not but tonight there were too many of our players who were not good.

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There is more to come from United. How can there not be when you can call on players like Van Persie, Wayne Rooney, Juan Mata, Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao? United fans will hope they see it when Liverpool visit Old Trafford on Sunday. If not, they will happily settle for another mediocre performance and another three points.

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United aren't far enough along in their transition under Van Gaal to be too demanding. The swagger might not have returned, but the steeliness developed under Sir Alex Ferguson has. His teams won plenty of games when they weren't at their best. He knew better than most that a win is a win no matter how it comes.

Van Gaal is entitled to be disappointed at the performance against Southampton. He has developed a reputation of winning by playing flowing, beautiful football.

There wasn't much of that on show at St Mary's, and the statistics prove it. But there's only statistic that really matters: the one that reads Southampton 1, Manchester United 2.