DAVID LYNCH Solskjaer on the road to nowhere

IT was said after Manchester United’s humiliation against bitter rivals Liverpool that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had three games to save his job.

If that was indeed the case, then it is difficult to see the Norwegian hanging on after his two-week grace period was bookended by yet another Old Trafford embarrassment.

United weren’t just beaten by Manchester City here, they were picked apart and – most crucially – reminded once again of the chasm separating them from the true elite.

And that should be enough reason for a manager who has had no shortage of backing in the transfer market, or

United weren’t just beaten, they were picked apart and

reminded of the chasm separating them from the

true elite

opportunities to prove his worth, to be moved on.

Solskjaer may have kicked off this crucial period with a win at Tottenham, but it felt telling that the opposition considered a 3-0 defeat sufficiently embarrassing to immediately sack their head coach.

Familiar problems then reared their head at Atalanta, only for the manager’s knack of doing just enough to keep himself in a job came good again, courtesy of Cristiano Ronaldo’s brilliance.

But even the Portuguese maestro could not make up for United’s shortcomings against their nearneighbours in game three, a 90 minutes that in fact served to highlight the possible folly of his signing.

Going into this derby, Solskjaer had won four and lost just one of his eight meetings with Pep Guardiola thanks to an approach that prioritised defensive solidity and saw United attack primarily on the break.

However, Ronaldo’s unsuitability to the role of link-man meant they could barely get up the pitch, while Jadon Sancho was not considered worthy of bringing much-needed pace to the starting line-up with Marcus Rashford only fit enough for the bench due to illness.

Frustrate

What’s more, a back-five that cost more than £200million never looked likely to frustrate City sufficiently to tempt them into leaving space on the break, with Eric Bailly instead kindly putting through his own net before David De Gea and Luke Shaw combined disastrously for the second goal scored by Bernardo Silva.

The continued failures of such an expensively-assembled squad only enhances the feeling Solskjaer is blindly grasping for a winning formula, rather than working to some grand master plan.

Contrast that with Guardiola, who will delight in having used this particular game to silence any doubts that surfaced after recent defeats to West Ham and Crystal Palace.

It is easy to see why the Spaniard was not too spooked by the latter result, even if others believed it brought into question his side’s title credentials.

Watching on at Old Trafford, it felt far easier to characterise Palace’s win

at the Etihad as just one of those off days. And the fact remains they tend to have many more days like this, where their slick, incisive football proves too much for their opponents.

Questions

Of course, the forensic Guardiola will be all too aware that there are questions he needs to answer if his team are to end this season holding silverware. The City boss still doesn’t quite seem to know how to get the best out of £100m man Jack Grealish, who started on the bench yesterday.

And, though no one can suggest the lack of an out-and-out striker in this formation is proving damaging in terms of results, it does often feel whoever is lumbered with the false nine role struggles to influence proceedings as much as they might.

Still, you would back Guardiola to solve that particular puzzle in the aftermath of a dominant derby display.

The same cannot be said for Solskjaer, who has looked incapable of finding solutions to a mess he has partly created over the course of what was billed as a do-or-die period.

His only hope now is that the Old Trafford hierarchy once again fail to notice.