MANCHESTER UNITED’S forthcoming fixture list is unforgiving, a dense period of games with Arsenal on Monday then AZ away in the Netherlands, Newcastle away, Liverpool at home before four straight away matches at Partisan, Norwich, Chelsea, and Bournemouth.
How is the injury hit team which struggled to overcome Astana, Rochdale and lost easily to West Ham going to overcome that lot? United haven’t won away since March. This season, after six games, it’s on a par with David Moyes’ faltering start and Louis van Gaal’s poor beginning a year later, yet both those managers saw their team pick up and start winning after that. Moyes’ team won four and drew one of the next five in the league. Van Gaal’s side won seven, drew two and lost one.
Can the United of 2019-20 repeat that? If Solskjaer can’t turn it round, big questions about his fitness to manage a club of United’s stature will be asked.
Solskjaer sees himself as re-installing a United- culture which had been gradually stripped away and he’s absolutely qualified to do so, having played at the club for 12 years and managed various United sides for eight. He’s been a winner. He wants players like his former teammates: mentally tough, winners. Wanting and getting is two different things and it’s a delicate one for the Norwegian because he’d be criticised for calling his failing players out in public, then criticised if he doesn’t.
Solskjaer wants players to act like United players, not piss about in a South Beach hotel room shouting ‘Beanz, Beanz, Beanz’ at a time when fans are angry because their team have been crap – and then publish it to the world. He’s disciplined other players more recently – and that’s been kept in-house and hasn’t made the news. He’s smiling and confident on the exterior, the opposite to his predecessor, but he has to be a tough bastard if needed. Yet he also can’t be like Ferguson, since footballers have changed. They’re not prepared to take the ‘hairdryer’ of Fergie-like fury as used to be the norm, they have far more money and their agents have more influence.
Thus, Solskjaer wants to develop players himself and benefits from a prospering youth system. Investment in that quadrupled in four years after years of under investment. It will take time but the Norwegian never stops asking questions and paying attention to the details.
His team are fitter than a year ago, the training is intense. The mood had picked up – though it gets a pounding with every dropped point, since United is always the story. And leaks about discontent in the dressing room don’t come the day after a win in Paris but they do after a shaky victory through penalties against Rochdale.
Get this on repeat!
16-year-old Luke Matheson's equaliser against Manchester United at Old Trafford last night #RAFC #Rochdale #MUFC pic.twitter.com/iBmFvhQztO
— Rochdale AFC (@officiallydale) September 26, 2019
Solskjaer has a strategy of how he wants his team to play – a 4-2-3-1 system with a settled defence and goalkeeper. He’s getting that. He wants his full backs high and wide. He’s getting that. Can he be tactically astute at the top level? He looked fine when he first arrived. That’s gone since becoming permanent boss.
Like any manager, he wants to bring in his own recruits. His first three signings look promising. He’s bought well in the summer – and it was Solskjaer who pushed hardest on all those three transfers. Short of tapping up the players, he did as much as he could to tell them that he really wanted them to play for Manchester United. He’s overseen the departures of several. There were next to no complaints when most of them went – only when the likes of Romelu Lukaku started scoring again, as he has done throughout most of his career. Ander Herrera’s departure was probably bemoaned the most, but United maintain that his wage demands were bordering on the extortionate – and for a player who wasn’t a regular. United are already over-paying, while their players are underperforming.
United are working towards their next batch of signings. Is it a good idea to throw all that away and start again given the manager has been in the job for nine months? How long would the next boss get? Another nine months before people are on his case? As has been shown by the United’s last three managers, it is not possible to turn a club around so quickly – though Solskjaer looked like he could in those first two months. Did he push harder for the job to be made permanent when others thought the club should wait. No, he carried on diligently, he leaked nothing to the media, his agent didn’t link him with elsewhere when he was flavour of the month.
That’s how it is now at the end of September 2019. Old Trafford need more investment, the team too. The owners and Ed Woodward are as unpopular as Martin Edwards was and David Gill became. That goes with the territory and has become exacerbated after the on pitch failings in recent years, especially the relegation form since March. Surely this can’t continue and United can’t be, say 15th, after 15 games. Surely it can’t be that bad?
In the short term a few good results will take the heat off, although Solskjaer is building for the long term. But another West Ham and Rochdale will ramp things up further. Fans will tire of Solskjaer’s breezy positivity if the football is unremittingly dull and defeats dominate, but could he really be blamed for his players missing all those sitters against Rochdale or the penalties against Wolves and Palace?
The probability is that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will be sacked one day, since the vast majority of football managers including those at United walk the plank sooner or later.
There are fans who pushed for Mourinho to go and now regret it. The club can’t be making major decisions on a whim. It isn’t a good idea to change manager every 18 months, though Real Madrid beg to differ and point to success despite their average of a coach each year for the last quarter of a century. United’s model has been different. The club’s two most successful managers, with 25 years service, were Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson.
At matches, the fans have remained supportive of Solskjaer, though clearly there are doubts. Matchgoers are patient – their detractors would say to a fault, but Ole needs their backing as much as he needs a change of fortune. United’s coaches feel they should have had more points and have been somewhat unlucky. Meanwhile, the winners keep on winning at the top of the league, while United’s other ‘rivals’ for the top four do not.
I was supportive of Mourinho until the end of November last year – and I was slaughtered for it. United fans were still singing his name in Valencia in the week he was sacked, with the ‘Jose’s at the wheel’ chant.
Maybe I was wrong, since Mourinho himself admitted he should have been sacked but every United manager who has been fired post-Ferguson said they needed more time. Of course, they would say that, but isn’t it about time one who actually understands United and is doing the right things actually got it?
