Solskjaer is United’s problem
The angry chants began when Manchester United were 3-0 up in their recent Premier League game against Norwich City and the team looked certain of victory. Only then did the crowd unleash vitriol and disdain towards the club’s owners, the reclusive Glazer family, and their man who runs the club, executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward.
It was deliberate timing. Regular supporters at Old Trafford did not want negative vibes to affect player performances. They did not want to impact on manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Clever thinking? Well, only up to a point.
United’s fans are right to make the Glazers a prime target of fury. For several years the unwelcome Americans were shielded from scrutiny by the majestic success of manager Alex Ferguson, but now the poverty of their ownership is fully exposed.
It is not that Manchester United lack money. They remain masters of the lucrative commercial deal, with more riches flooding in than any club in the world bar Real Madrid and Barcelona. It is a poverty of intellect.
What they lack is good sense in spending their wealth. What they lack is coherent football strategy and leadership – and the consequence has been several years of missing out on the Champions League.
For so long this essential for a major football club was automatic. Perhaps they will be on the outside again next season.
Transfer policy, commanded by Woodward, has been in constant flux. The world record signing of Paul Pogba has been a failure. The capture of Alexis Sanchez just to stop him going to Manchester City proved a disaster. Now the plan has been abandoned to a focus on acquiring young players of talent and potential.
Every choice of manager has been flawed since the dismissal of Ferguson’s nominated successor, David Moyes, within a season. Two star names followed, but Louis Van Gaal and Jose Mourinho were yesterday’s men compared to Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola.
Now? Well, now there is equal folly, with the owners and their executive vice-chairman seduced into awarding the permanent position to interim manager Solskjaer.
It was a knee-jerk decision, and these are rarely vindicated.
United have been outside the Premier League top four all season. There has been the occasional good win and performance – the product mostly of Marcus Rashford maturing into a world-class forward – but Solskjaer’s side are wildly inconsistent, with no discernible football style or philosophy.
Many supporters harbour doubts about the Norwegian as a manager but remember him fondly as a player and the man who scored the winning goal in that impossibly dramatic finale in the 1999 Champions League Final.
There is sympathy and scepticism in equal measure, and fans are unwilling to make him a target of discontent when he is the fall guy for the power-brokers.
Maybe you can’t blame them, but a serious truth remains for anyone with Manchester United’s fortunes in their heart.
It is that the first-team manager is the most important day-to-day figure at a football club and that Solskjaer is a lightweight figure miscast in a heavyweight role.
He is manager by default rather than grand design, talking too often about the past, referring to how it was at Old Trafford in his playing days. The nostalgic stunt of taking his young squad to practise at the club’s old Cliff training ground, to inspire them by evoking the atmosphere of the Ferguson era, was foolish.
While the team has scrambled through the winter, world-class managers have been waiting in the wings: Mauricio Pochettino, who took Tottenham Hotspur to the Champions League Final last season, and former Juventus boss Max Allegri, a five-times winner of Serie A.
They will not wait forever as United owners and fans decline to end their delusion.
The richest football club in England desperately needs more intelligent long-term leadership; at the very least a proper director of football to work on player recruitment and club strategy.
There is no doubt of this. But first comes first – and that is a champion manager.
Solskjaer’s side are wildly inconsistent, with no discernible football style or philosophy