FERGIE CASTS A HUGE SHADOW
Great manager’s glorious past is stifling United’s chance of new direction
SIR ALEX FERGUSON will take no pleasure that a roll of the eyes and a puff of his cheeks may have contributed in small part to the unravelling of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign at OldTrafford.
After all, how else was he supposed to react to the worst home defeat by Liverpool in the club’s history and an abject showing on a nightmare Sunday afternoon?
But while it will no doubt frustrate that his reaction was picked up and pored over, it demonstrates once more United’s inability to escape the shadow of the Ferguson era.
If Solskjaer goes through the very thin ice he appears to be on, he would follow David Moyes, Louis van Gaal,
Jose Mourinho as managers who have tried and failed to measure up.
But as the board weigh up their options – they were locked in meetings over his future yesterday – it is high time that they make a decision for the good of the club’s future direction.
It is time for them to kick an addiction of dipping into a bag of the familiar to come up with pale imitations of a glorious past and to back a new direction out of that shadow. Under the Glazer family United have lacked the vision to embrace it with any confidence after the exit of their most successful manager.
Having attempted to strike out and seen the returns fail to match – Mourinho’s dour approach bringing success but failing to excite – their reaction has been to retreat into a world of familiar faces to recreate past success.
Solskjaer is the most visible sign of that – the man who scored perhaps the most significant goal of Ferguson’s 27 years at the club, annointed by his old boss and persisted with through thin and now thinner.
But it is there in the coaching staff with contracts for Ferguson’s old boys in Mike Phelan, midfielder Michael Carrick, the caretaker role for Ryan Giggs, and lately the showstopping attempt to reconnect the dots between decades with Cristiano Ronaldo’s signing. All of these appointments have hinted at a vacuum of original thinking at the top beyond we need to get back to Fergie’s time.
In contrast, Manchester City and Liverpool have built new structures on fresh thinking.They employed the most successful sporting directors and the best managers and they have been rewarded with better football and better sides.
United need to map out a new future with a nod to the traditions of the club, not a sycophantic bow.
The irony is that Ferguson himself experienced the huge shadow of having fellow Glaswegian Sir Matt Busby as a prominent and visible reminder of past glories during his difficult early years.
Busby had an office in a corner of Old Trafford. But the difference is that Ferguson brought not only a winning pedigree but a new approach. If they decide to axe Solskjaer, his successor needs to bring trophies or risk withering in the same shadow.
There is a vacuum of original thinking