Under-fire Ole is set to go on the attack!
UNITED’S brightest day in the miserable three-week run between the October and November international breaks initially threatened to herald a new dawn.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer clung on to his job in the wake of the 5-0 defeat to Liverpool at Old Trafford and a week later he ripped up his system, abandoning the 4-2-3-1 and opting for a back three at Tottenham.
It seemed a success on that Saturday night. United won 3-0 and the crisis had been calmed, but the caveat was it came against a Spurs side so abject they sacked their manager two days later.
The back four had left United’s defence exposed all season, culminating in the successive Premier League defeats to Leicester City and Liverpool when nine goals were conceded and it still felt like the damage could have been more severe.
In North London, the back three seemed to give United stability and control, something they’d lacked all season. It was comfortably the best defensive performance of the season.
It was used again in Bergamo a few days later but Raphael Varane’s injury in the first half when United were 1-0 down led to it being abandoned against Atalanta.
It was back against City but Pep Guardiola’s side are supreme at pulling apart a back three and they were in total control at half-time.
At 2-0 down Solskjaer ripped up the back three at the break, with Jadon Sancho coming on. The return to a 4-2-3-1 made little difference and United didn’t have a touch in the City penalty area in the second half until the fourth minute of injury time.
But speaking after that Old Trafford defeat Solskjaer suggested the back three had been out of necessity more than anything else, hinting even the win at Tottenham hadn’t entirely satisfied his desire to turn United into an attacking side.
Asked if he was still the man to take the Reds forward, he said he was and then outlined his mission: “[To get] back to where we should be, for me it is like back to what we started to look like, a proper team and what I wanted to see and then we have had two or three or four weeks a difficult spell.
“The result against Tottenham was good but it was not what we want to look like. We want to be on the front foot, to be more aggressive.
“We have a couple of good results Atalanta and Tottenham and today was a big step back.”
That desire to be on the front foot suggests the switch to a back three will only be a short-term solution. It didn’t work against City and that might well be the end of the experiment.
It would certainly be a negative move to stick with it at Watford on Saturday after those comments, so expect Solskjaer to drill his team in a 4-2-3-1 once again when he returns to Carrington today.
That system has posed United plenty of problems this season, but Solskjaer’s desire to see his team attack and be on the front foot looks to be winning the day.
The manager’s principles are clearly to attack and in the next few weeks, it looks like he’s going to try and live or die by those principles.