FIVE-STAR SOLSKJAER
United make a flying start under stand-in boss Ole
THE chant rolled down from the exuberant away section at the Cardiff City Stadium. Over and over again, the Manchester United fans sang it, revelling in nostalgia and exulting in the joy of liberation that they could see coursing through their players. After all the division and drudgery of the Jose Mourinho years, this felt like the day they got their team back.
This felt like watching Manchester United again. Not some pale, dour imitation of United. Not some team scared of its own shadow and forbidden from expressing its talent. Not some team inhibited by it own history. Not some team that wasn’t even trusted by its own manager. This, at last, was a United team playing with swagger.
When Jesse Lingard rolled in United’s fifth in the dying seconds of this romp, everybody grasped the symbolism. It was the first time United had scored five goals since Sir Alex Ferguson’s last game in charge in May 2013, a rambunctious 5-5 draw with West Brom.
This felt, in moments at least, like a team that had some of the same spirit and panache as the Ferguson sides that once made United great.
This felt like watching a team that was at least trying to wipe away the memories of the five-and-a-half years of struggle and uncertainty since Ferguson retired.
And so they sang. ‘You are my Solskjaer,’ they yelled, lauding their new interim manager and the man who will forever be associated with the most dramatic moment in the club’s history, ‘my Ole Solskjaer, you make me happy, when skies are grey. Oh Alan Shearer, was ******* dearer, so please don’t take my Solskjaer away.’
The chant carried United fans back to happier times. Some of their football did, too. If ever a team looked like it had staged a prison break, it was this team. Paul Pogba, Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford, in particular, looked like men who had been liberated from the yoke of a manager whose faith they had never enjoyed.
In the past five years, we have grown used to the strange sight of United teams devoid of panache and stripped of dynamism. So even though this was only a victory against a struggling Cardiff side, it was still encouraging to see style and verve flooding back into United’s play. They have struggled against worse sides than Cardiff this season.
Some of their play was scintillating. Most of it went through Pogba, the man who had come to symbolise the opposition to Mourinho’s joyless regime.
‘Caption this,’ Pogba had posted on his Instagram feed next to a picture of the France World Cup winner looking pleased with himself soon after the announcement of Mourinho’s sacking. ‘You can do one, too,’ Gary Neville had replied.
Pogba’s performance in South Wales was an indication of why it would be very much in United’s best interests if he didn’t do one.
Faced with a choice of dispensing with Mourinho or Pogba, United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward axed Mourinho. It is one of the few things he’s got right at Old Trafford.
Some will say United’s players should be ashamed of themselves for not performing like this when Mourinho was in charge. That is nonsense. The manager picks the team, sets the tempo and dictates the morale. If his players did not play at their best under him, that was his fault. No one else’s.
Solskjaer deserves plenty of the credit for this performance, too. In a few days, he has restored some positivity to a United squad that had become racked by division and Mourinho’s self-defeating mind games.
He carries an aura with him at Old Trafford. He is the personification of an era of unparalleled glories, unsullied by all that has happened in the wake of Ferguson’s departure.
On loan from Norwegian side Molde, he has 21 league games in charge at United until the end of the season when it is expected that the club will announce a new permanent manager.
The way he has approached the job already and the performance he oversaw here was testimony to the effect of positive man-management and a break from the narcissism of the previous incumbent.
Mourinho’s bequest to Solskjaer was a United team that started the evening 22 points behind leaders Liverpool and 11 points shy of a place in the top four, a team that had almost forgotten what it felt like to be confident even against a struggling side, a team that had had all its personality beaten out of it.
Solskjaer’s first teamsheet showed some promising signs. No more of Mourinho’s stupid games or power plays with Martial and Pogba, the two most naturally talented players at the club, a starting role for Rashford and a return for Luke Shaw, who fell foul of the manager formerly known as the Special One more times than anyone could keep count of.
It took only three minutes for new life to be breathed into the side. Pogba was brought down on the edge of the box as he attempted a sidestep and Rashford sidefooted a dipping, swerving free-kick past Neil Etheridge.
Suddenly, this was a United side brimful of confidence, happy to keep the ball, able to keep the ball. This was a team that did not look technically bereft. This was a team enjoying itself again.
Pogba made the second, too, turning inside and playing a square ball to Ander Herrera 25 yards out. Herrera’s shot deflected off Greg Cunningham and looped into the top corner.
There was a brief setback eight minutes before half-time when Rashford handled in the penalty area and Victor Camarasa slammed in the spot-kick but United responded with the kind of brilliant team goal that has become such a rare species in the years since Ferguson left.
Martial started it 30 yards out and played a short ball to Pogba, who fed Lingard and he played the ball back to Martial, who took it at pace, slaloming past the lunging challenge of Sean Morrison and slotting the ball past Etheridge.
Lingard put United 4-1 up with a penalty early in the second half after he had been brought down by Sol Bamba. As United fans partied, danced and sang Solskjaer’s name, Pogba threaded another ball through Cardiff’s defence and Lingard added the fifth in the last minute to cement that link with the past.
CARDIFF (4-5-1): Etheridge; Manga, Morrison, Bamba, Cunningham; Hoilett (Harris 74), Camarasa, Gunnarsson (Ralls 83), Arter (Zohore 61), Murphy; Paterson. Subs (not used): Smithies, Peltier, Reid, MendezLaing, Harris. Booked: Cunnigham, Gunnarsson. MAN UNITED (4-3-3): De Gea; Young, Jones, Lindelof, Shaw; Herrera, Matic (Fellaini 87), Pogba; Lingard, Rashford (Fred 79), Martial (Pereira 87). Subs (not used): Romero, Bailly, Mata, Dalot. Booked: Shaw. Referee: Michael Oliver. Attendance: 33,028.