No belief, no ambition, no plan – this is United under Solskjaer
2-0 defeat by City underlined why Norwegian is the wrong man but club are too frightened to make a change
That fabled ‘DNA’ the manager bangs on about could have stood for ‘Do Not Attack’ against City
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The problem when you have been wedded to something flawed is that, when realisation eventually begins to dawn, the unravelling has already gathered such pace that much of the good work has been undermined and you are at risk of going back to square one. And this is where Manchester United now find themselves with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer: players going backwards, confidence shattered, fault lines widening, a strategic black hole and a team spiralling under a manager who no longer inspires trust.
There is none of the toxicity that marked the end of Jose Mourinho’s bloody regime but the ship is still going down and it is a pitiful sight.
For the moment, Solskjaer continues to cling on to his job, but four points from 18 is relegation form and even United’s great survivor is running out of lives.
United’s bench against Manchester City at Old Trafford was a monument to how badly the whole thing has sailed off course: Jadon Sancho, the £73million summer recruit who was supposed to light up the right wing, wondering where he figures in the lurch to a back five, Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial, Jesse Lingard and, of course, Donny van de Beek, who looks like more of a mascot than Fred the Red.
It was the 35th anniversary on Saturday of Sir Alex Ferguson’s appointment as United manager but that fabled “DNA” Solskjaer bangs on about could have stood for “Do Not Attack” against City as a team stripped of self-belief and hamstrung by the system, selection and a whole lot in between surrendered to a vastly superior enterprise.
United had four touches in City’s box, their fewest in a Premier League game since Opta began compiling such information. City completed 753 passes, a record in the league’s data driven era. David de Gea faced more shots on target from his own players than United managed at City’s Ederson.
Twenty one per cent of United’s 63 Premier League defeats at Old Trafford have come under Solskjaer, who has won just 11 of his 27 home league fixtures, dating back to the end of the 2019-20 campaign.
Players are crumbling. Luke Shaw is resembling the left-back broken by Mourinho. Harry Maguire would not get in the Leicester City team he left for £85million at the moment. Aaron Wan-bissaka is sinking by the week. Mistakes are creeping back into De Gea’s game, even if he has been by far his team’s best performer. The Fred and Scott Mctominay pile-on feels unsustainable. Bruno Fernandes, for so long United’s talisman, is being dragged down with the rest of them. Edinson
Cavani is injured, again. Paul Pogba is suspended, his indiscipline having caught up with him. We know how Sancho and Lingard have looked in different hands at different clubs but what about Rashford and Martial? And is Cristiano Ronaldo now regretting his return?
Whatever the rights and wrongs of United’s decision to appoint Solskjaer permanently, the warning signs that change was necessary to make the jump from established top-four side to serious title challengers were evident long before they limped to a penalty shoot-out defeat by Villarreal in the Europa League final in May.
Yet United, “more convinced than ever” they were “on the right track” to quote executive vicechairman Ed Woodward, responded by handing Solskjaer a new threeyear contract and, having hurtled almost blindly into this brick wall, seem unsure where to go next.
Antonio Conte was available after the 5-0 capitulation at home against Liverpool but United were not interby
ested. He has since been snapped up by Spurs and a shortage of attainable alternatives is a problem, but when does the timing ever seem right for United? They have either not moved swiftly or decisively when desirable candidates have been available (they could have had Mauricio Pochettino or Thomas Tuchel if they had not been fixated on the Solskjaer experiment), they have botched the pitch (think Jurgen Klopp and all that “Disneyland” guff) or they find themselves down a cul-de-sac, like now.
But why do United now seem so fearful of appointing a demanding manager? Was Ferguson not stubborn and bloody-minded? Do United seriously think Pep Guardiola, Klopp and Tuchel are not challenging to work with? During an informal round-table discussion with Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the City chairman, and his chief executive, Ferran Soriano, a few years ago, it was made abundantly clear how relentlessly demanding Guardiola is to employ. Pochettino? Was the
Argentine not challenging the Tottenham board over transfers in the year before his eventual sacking?
But that is what the “best-inclass” in any walk of life do: they drive higher standards and are unafraid to put noses out of joint when needed for the greater good but being difficult, at times, does not mean they cannot manage up and down, that they scorch anything and everything in their path.
United seem irrationally scarred by the Mourinho years when it took Kelly Cates, the Sky Sports anchor, to point out on Saturday that he and predecessor Louis van Gaal had been long past their best when they rocked up at Old Trafford. The reality is United have not appointed a manager-coach at the top of his game since Ferguson retired.
We decry the absence of loyalty in football but blind faith can, in its own way, be as corrosive as a hireand-fire mentality and Old Trafford has become a cosy club, where there is plenty of back-slapping but few who can see the wood for the trees. This is the Glazer legacy: dismal appointments and the death of ambition, where fourth is the new first and the promise of a brave new world never materialises.
I have often likened covering the post-ferguson United to pushing food around a plate and the analogy is still holding firm.