‘I’m sorry, Nuno’ ... Ole to contact axed Spurs chief
OLE Gunnar Solskjaer is going to get in touch with Nuno Espirito Santo to offer him his condolences after he was sacked by Tottenham Hotspur yesterday.
Nuno was been under mounting pressure since the Reds beat his side 3-0 on Saturday evening.
The home support turned on him during that game, with vociferous boos when Lucas Moura was taken over and chants of ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’.
The former Wolves manager was only appointed by Tottenham in the summer but his reign has been an uninspiring one, with the 3-0 defeat at the weekend the final straw.
Spurs are now close to appointing Antonio Conte as Nuno’s replacement. The Italian, who is without a club after leaving Inter Milan in the summer, was linked with replacing Solskjaer when the Norwegian was under pressure last week.
The weekend win has eased the speculation around his own future, but he still has sympathy with the predicament it has left Nuno in.
“It’s never nice to see good men lose their jobs, he’s been working hard and I don’t know what the situation is at Tottenham but as a colleague, you are never happy when that happens,” said Solskjaer.
“You try to get in touch with him and tell him your feelings.”
United’s crucial win in North London came after Solskjaer moved to a back three and fielded Cristiano Ronaldo and Edinson Cavani together in attack.
But he suggested that new-look side wasn’t set in stone ahead of tonight’s Champions League tie with Atalanta and said the victory owed more to players executing their plan than the tactical tweaks.
“We’ve got players to play many different systems, back three, four, five, we’ve got wide men, wingers,
4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, we looked at the Tottenham game and felt that to get more control we played that system and it worked,” said Solskjaer.
“The execution within the role is more important than the system. The quality of the pass from Bruno to Cristiano for the first goal, that’s individual brilliance.
“We were solid, we were very happy with the defending and the pressure in the team, the individual reactions in the role were more important.”