It's Time: Sacking Ole Gunnar Solskjaer needs to happen and he only has himself to blame
Sacking the Norwegian won't solve all the problems at Manchester United, but at the end of the day he made this bed and will have to suffer the consequences.
I wanted Mauricio Pochettino. I wanted him for all the reasons everyone was touting him. Plays young players, plays a fun style of football, seemed to have a long term plan etc etc. As an added bonus he seemed to understand that you need to be shaking up your team every 3-4 years, and was looking to do that at Spurs only to be thwarted by Daniel Levy.
My second choice was Zinedine Zidane. When Jose Mourinho was fired Zidane seemed much more realistic considering the fact that he was available.
Like everyone else I was (extremely) confused when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was announced as United’s caretaker manager. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer? Didn’t he fail at Cardiff? The man had been quietly managing in Norway the past few years. Who would even think to call him?
I gave it some thought and quickly came around to the idea. As I wrote at the time, this makes sense, Solskjaer will carry the team until the summer when obtaining Pochettino becomes much more realistic.
A little over a month later I started changing my tune. This was a United squad loaded with talent and it looked like they just needed a manager who said “go out there and play.” Solskjaer most certainly did that the first few games and United easily moved past opponents at the bottom of the table. Then they went to Wembley to face Pochettino’s Tottenham and displayed some tactical nous. They showed up playing a compact 4-4-2 diamond. At halftime they switched to a 4-2-3-1, staying organized and disciplined the entire time.
A few weeks later they went to the Emirates with a clear tactical plan and won, then did the same thing at Stamford Bridge. Within a few weeks it was clear that Ole was more than just a “go out there and play guy.”
I thought they were a little too hasty in giving him the full time contract but I didn’t think it was undeserved either. The poor run to close out the season never bothered me because it was clear this team was completely burnt out. Marcus Rashford was playing on one leg. Jesse Lingard, Anthony Martial, Matic, and Ander Herrera - the stars of the opening run of games were all battling injuries so none of the pieces matched. It was understandable.
I’ve always said I liked the idea of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer much more than I liked Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Given the back room setup of the club - and we’re seeing now the way they’ve handled this situation just proves that they still very much are a joke - it was important to have a manger who actually looking out for the long term benefit of the club.
There were certainly better coaches out there, but all of them know they’ll only be at a job for around three years so they don’t care what happens to the club four years from now. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a United fan first. Every decision he made was with the club first. Even when his team was decimated by injuries, he wasn’t going to play an academy player - who might have been (probably) better than Andreas Pereira but definitely wasn’t yet ready for the Premier League - and risk his development. Long term was more important.
He wanted to build a team that wouldn’t just compete “this year and next year,” but something that was sustainable to keep competing while slowly phasing out 1-2 players a year so you never had to do another complete rebuild.
This was the direction I wanted the club to go in and as someone who was studying the economics of football, I knew this is how you had to go about things to win in modern football. Unless you have oil money, the strategy of throwing tons of money at experienced players every summer to either rebuild or complete your team is entirely unsustainable. Those players quickly become deadweight and impossible to move on, and your spending quickly starts out pacing the amount of money you’re bringing in. It’s not a recipe for long term sustainable success.1
Just like I said I liked the idea of Solskjaer I also said, this is not the best reason to keep a coach in place! But the football had been ~good enough~ that it was worth seeing out this project because at least he was bringing some stability and direction on the back office end.2 I saw the big picture of where we wanted this to go and I was fine being patient with it because, while the team had some maddeningly frustrating games, for the most part they were more fun then they’d been in years.
The truth of the matter is, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did a remarkable job at Manchester United. I don’t think he’s ever going to get the credit that he really deserves. It’s not just the offloading the deadweight and the building the new culture. But on the pitch, he did a phenomenal job.
He stripped the team down to their bare bones in 2019-20 essentially forcing the top players to play every match in all competitions. Coming into the 19-20 season he had to get answers about the squad. Could Martial and Rashford carry a teams scoring. Could Andreas Pereira live up to his potential now that he’d get a run in his preferred attacking midfield position? Is Scott McTominay an every day midfielder?
Ironically the answers to those questions were: not really, no, and no. Yet Solskjaer had this team competing all season. They were fifth in the league before Bruno Fernandes arrived.
The cries that there was no structure was bizarre. The structure was there for all to see. It’s a team based around a number 10 and when that 10 is Pereira or Lingard you’re not going to be good!
Year two might have been an even bigger accomplishment for Solskjaer. It was a season entirely devoted to papering over the very obvious cracks in United’s team.
United didn’t add a single first choice starter to a team that desperately needed upgrades3 and yet, they increased their points haul and finished second. They did that without a threat from the right side. They did that with Fred and McTominay starting the bulk of games in midfield.
Again it’s hard to stress what kind of an accomplishment that is. The “McFred” pivot has started 36 Premier League matches under Ole. United have won 17 of them (47.22% - 1.76 PPM). It’s just so so average. On top of that, his strikers weren’t scoring. Mason Greenwood played more and scored less. Rashford scored the same amount and Martial fell off a cliff. Cavani provided a good 0.65 npG per 90 but didn’t play nearly enough to make it title challenging impactful. They still finished second in goals.
I’m rambling now. The point is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did an incredible job for two years, and I defended him because a lot of the criticism he got was just way too over the top. Yes he had a squad with some very good players. He also had some overrated players, and he also had some major holes in that squad. None of the other top four teams - or Leicester - had the kind of black holes in their squad that United did.
Nevertheless it’s time to sack him.
I’ve been getting close to saying that for a while but it’s clear as day now. This morning someone asked me why I’ve “changed my tune.”
The answer is simple. Because Ole Gunnar Solskjaer just stopped doing a good job.
In a way, Solskjaer is the victim of his own success here. When you finish second there’s only one more place to move up in the table. Even though United were never really in the title race last year they were now expected to be in it this year. There was just one problem with that, they really weren’t ready to do that.
They prioritized a center back over a midfielder, even though a midfielder would both make your existing defense better while also helping your attack. It was an opportunity to get a great defender and it was a pretty low fee so whatever. But then United said that was it, no more money left to spend.
If Solskjaer knew that he’d only have money for two signings, that’s bad prioritization, no matter how good Varane is. If you can’t protect him, he ain’t gonna solve the problem.
United’s match vs Southampton just emphasized how badly United needed a midfielder who could pass. The team was well organized defensively and gave the Saints nothing, but couldn’t generate any sort of attack.
After that game United suddenly had money to sign another player. They used it on Cristiano Ronaldo, because - god forbid you let a player who doesn’t fit Pep Guardiola’s system at all go to Manchester City4. It was a move that Solskjaer very much appeared to be at the front of. (EDIT: Throwing an edit in here two years later due to information I have since obtained and confirmed but didn’t have at the time. Solskjaer was not at the forefront of bringing in Ronaldo - but he did sign off on the move).
Let’s remember, United finished last season second in the Premier League in goals scored, but sixth in shots, fifth in non-penalty xG, and a whopping ninth in xG per shot, but they were third in NPxG-npG. All that tells us is goal scoring and ruthless finishing were very much not problems last year. Creating chances and creating good chances were.
Ronaldo doesn’t solve those problems. He’s not a chance creator anymore. He’s not really much of anything other than a ‘get me the ball in the box’ type of players. And that’s not to mention the whole slew of defensive issues he’ll cause. None of that is new though. He didn’t work hard defensively 15 years ago - United just had the coverage back then - he’s not going to work hard now when United don’t.
Ronaldo was labeled as the missing piece to competing for the Premier League title which was ridiculous. United weren’t ready to compete without Ronaldo and adding this piece didn’t change that. It just changed the expectations.
Either way, you can coach around this. You can come up with a system that compensates for Ronaldo’s lack of work-rate.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer very much hasn’t. He’s basically relied on 10 men to do the job of 11 which usually forces Bruno Fernandes to do two or even three players jobs sometimes. It’s tiring the players out and creating gaps all over the pitch as players fill in for one another.
Over the first three games of the season United were conceding 0.79 xG from open play5. It’s a small sample size but it stacks right up there with the 0.74 they were conceding over the final 35 games of last season6. In the six games since that number has shot up to 1.28. What’s changed?
More importantly, has Ole Gunnar Solskjaer done anything to combat this change? Against Villarreal and Leicester City he put the team in more of a 4-3-3/4-1-4-1 formation, which only emphasized the amount of gaps that open up in the middle of the pitch. Against Atalanta and Liverpool the team was playing much more of a 4-2-4 leaving the midfield completely exposed. This was the opposite of what they needed!
Solskjaer seems to be actively choosing not to address this, which is odd because organizing a team is literally what he was really good at.
The story on Solskjaer was always “we know he can set up a team to defend against the big boys but he struggles in matches where United have all the ball.” Solskjaer went to the Parc de Prince twice and played with two different very good and compact defensive systems. He went to Anfield last season and played a very compact 4-4-2, which was too defensive for even my liking, but it was good. They were terrific at the Ethiad last season and even better in the Manchester Derby at Old Trafford in 2019-20.
But Solskjaer’s decisions over the past six weeks have been nothing short of bizarre. He spent two years working to bring Jadon Sancho to Old Trafford and now that he’s got him he doesn’t use him7? And why not? Because Mason Greenwood - who hasn’t had a good game in a month and has not linked up with Ronaldo at all - is suddenly undroppable?
Cristiano Ronaldo is a striker that needs service to be most effective. Solskjaer continually insists on flanking him with two players whose first preference is to cut inside and shoot in Rashford and Greenwood while leaving his elite creators on the bench. Edinson Cavani is the same way and there’s a reason things really started clicking for him last season when Paul Pogba was pushed up to the left wing and Rashford went to the right (where’s more creative).
Greenwood himself brings about his own defensive problems. He’s quite bad at it. He (still) doesn’t understand how to close down angles when he presses making it very easy to bypass him. He’s often doesn’t fall into position and you can usually see him wandering around not marking anyone.
This is happening for one of two reasons: either United’s coaches aren’t teaching him how to press properly or explaining to him where he’s supposed to be or he’s just not listening to them. If he’s not listening to them he needs to be dropped, which isn’t happening. Neither one of those things looks good on the manager.
The same thing applies to Bruno Fernandes. Bruno loves to just go rogue on the press which only creates more gaps. Either they’re not telling him to stop doing that or he’s not listening. If it’s the latter, he’s not getting dropped and they’re just letting him be.
Ole’s had bad moments and bad results before, but it’s never been like this. The loss to Istanbul in the Champions League last season sticks out and saw everyone calling for his head because ‘how could you lose to a small club?’ but the club (rightfully) stuck by him. That loss came on the heels of United putting out several very organized, compact, and very good defensive performances. The loss to Istanbul was a combination of over rotation and individual mistakes. It wasn’t too surprising when United followed that match by going unbeaten in the Premier League for the next two and a half months and losing only one game through May.
This is different. This isn’t one result. This is several results. At first United were still getting wins with the alarm bells ringing but that predictably stopped happening.
International breaks have typically been a strong point for Solskjaer to assess things and he usually came out of them with very strong performances. He had an international break to assess the last month, figure out what the the problems were, and figure out a way to solve them.
Ironically, I genuinely think Solskjaer can solve them. This run of fixtures plays right into United’s strengths under Solskjaer. Hunker down, get tight, defend, and counter attack.
United are getting cut out and carved open week after week. This is something that simply didn’t happen last season. The last game I can remember where they were this overrun in midfield last season was West Ham away. United managed to win that game but what happened in the aftermath? The Pogba-McTominay pivot has started one single Premier League match since, and it only lasted 37 minutes. Donny van de Beek hasn’t started a meaningful Premier League match since.
Whether those were the right changes or not is irrelevant. At least Solskjaer reacted to something that didn’t work. This season, Solskjaer isn’t reacting to anything. It’s almost as if he’s pretended there is no problem.
United got carved open by Atalanta and Solskjaer somehow decided the best way to face Liverpool is not dropping clearly out of form players and doing… the exact same thing you did against Atalanta?? He has a striker who famously is not someone who works hard off the ball and he flanked him with two players who he very much knows aren’t hard workers off the ball. Then he decided that United were going to press Liverpool high up the pitch? You tried to go toe to to with Liverpool with McTominay and Fred in midfield? How did you not know what would happen?
When that happens you no longer get the benefit of the doubt that you could fix this. For Solskjaer, it really looks like either he doesn’t know how to fix it, or doesn’t seem to even know what the problem is.
And that just can’t fly.
In the past I could brush off a bad performance for the big picture. I could brush off still not being better than Liverpool because, well, we weren’t there yet. But the actions taken over the summer shifted this away from ‘the long term picture.’
It’s no longer a rebuild. It’s an (ill-advised) title challenge that the team isn’t ready for that may come at the expense of developing a team that could have competed for one next year or the year after. And when you sign off on a deal that shifts the team in that direction, you’re complicit in that change. There is no big picture anymore and you don’t seem all that eager to fix it. This is the bed you made and now you have to lie in it.
Putting us back in the hands of this incompetent board worries me. I’m worried for the future of the club again. My biggest fear is that in a few years we’ll look back at the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer era and realize that the grass isn’t always greener.
2019-2021 Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a very good manager for this team that deserves a lot of respect. 2021-22 Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has not been a good manager at all. He’s changed, and not for the better.
There’s nothing else to say. It’s simply time.
As we’re seeing now. Barcelona are on the brink of bankruptcy while Real Madrid are merely talking a big game. Inter spent a ton of money for Antonio Conte only for two years later to tell him “we have to sell everyone because we have no money.” Juventus had been trying to get Ronaldo’s wages off the books for two years.
And as this week has shown us, you really can’t trust the back end of the club.
Of all the players United signed in the summer of 2020 Edinson Cavani lead the way with 13 Premier League starts. Fewer than 40% of the games
Could you imagine Ronaldo in Pep’s system - a system that requires all 11 players to be constantly working and moving together. It'd be a disaster! At the time the move seemed bizarre to me because there’s just no way Pep would want Ronaldo in his team. We now know City weren’t willing to pay a transfer fee for Ronaldo, and many agents have said they always thought it was a smokescreen just to get United to act. Of course it was, we’re literally that easy to manipulate. Such a joke.
Per FotMob
Considering the “disaster” that was the Wolves match makes up 1/3 of that total, United were pretty good defensively in those first three games!
I don’t mind the left wing thing at all. Sancho played LW pretty often at Borussia Dortmund, including most of the back end of 2020-21. He’s really good there.
Incredible article. To be honest, I was a bit upset by the headline and as a massive fan of Oles work I was simply expecting to find a lot of the rubbish that has already been posted in the last week or so. But you found a new angle and a very interesting one at that.
What puzzles me is simply why and how? How can we go from having such a good defence to such a horrible one? Yes, Shaw and Maguire are not up to their usual standards but other than that - what is going on?
Really hoping for a massive performance on Saturday. You hit the spot about us probably looking back realising the grass probably weren’t greener in a few years - right now though the arguments against that are wearing thin.
Loved this article Paul.
What further worries me is if he gets results against Spurs and Atalanta, which is very likely (and this is not to say I want him to lose), the board will decide to keep him and another season will go down the drain because let’s face it, he’s not at the level of his competition. Also Sir Alex Ferguson protecting him and needing to be at a CArrington was a bad look in my view, like OGs can’t hold his own. Also SAF by sticking up for him, is holding the team back. I wouldn’t mind a Conte for two or three years because Ik he could come in this season and get the team challenging. Under Ole, that’s not going to happen. The players don’t have faith in his tactics. Sad times.