Liverpool stepping up their title charge, Manchester United old boys scuppering Solskjær and Brighton letting it slipIt is a footnote to the weekend’s biggest story, but the final nail in Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s coffin was partly hammered in by four players who were at various points deemed not good enough for Manchester United. Ben Foster, Craig Cathcart, Tom Cleverley and Joshua King all made vital contributions to a Watford performance that brimmed with energy, intent and endeavour. United’s class of 2021 lacked all those qualities, and plenty more. They were simply overrun and, while Solskjær’s departure was both inevitable and correct, they might wonder whether a better engagement with the basics might have helped their old manager’s cause. After the...
The least qualified manager in the club’s modern history is gone but the real concern is how he got the job in the first placeEver feel like you’ve been had? As the final notes in Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s long goodbye play themselves out, as statements are issued and narratives massaged, it is worth taking a step back from all that background noise. For all the dead energy, and the ultimate humiliations of the Solskjær era, this has also been an uncomfortable note in English football’s modern history. What exactly just happened?Solskjær to Manchester United was a weird, doomed appointment from the start, one that bled into a weird, doomed, half-life as United’s sixth-longest-serving postwar manager. It will surely be a...
Forward is seemingly impossible to fit into a modern system and his signing symbolises a flaw holding back the clubSo, what next? Ole Gunnar Solskjær has gone, and with him perhaps Manchester United’s most visible problem, but a sentimental appointment wasn’t the only issue holding the club back. United are institutionally dysfunctional and it will take more than a change of personnel in the dugout to change that.Solskjær was a fine appointment as caretaker, perhaps the last good decision Ed Woodward made as United CEO. The return of a popular club legend, the sunshine man whose rays of decency could dispel the acrimony of the latter days of José Mourinho’s reign, made sense. The problem was that rather than waiting...
United have an imbalanced squad and a muddled long-term strategy did not help a manager who was clearly strugglingManchester United are a club hooked on instant highs and short-term fixes, where memories are short and judgments are definitive, right up until the moment they aren’t. New episodes arrive twice a week. Redemption is – usually – only ever 90 minutes away.United’s 4-1 defeat at Watford on Saturday proved a watershed moment for Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s management, the final straw – except the humiliation against Manchester City was supposedly the final straw. So too the 5-0 trouncing at home to Liverpool. Or the time they conceded a goal to Istanbul Basaksehir without a single defender in their own half. Continue reading...
Arsenal might fancy their chances at Anfield and three new managers begin survival bidsThis will be the fourth meeting between Leicester and Chelsea this calendar year, clubs of differing resources whose fortunes nonetheless seem tangled together. Leicester went top after beating Chelsea 2-0 at home in January, James Maddison scoring the second goal before cheerfully claiming: “We knew they switched off at set pieces,” an observation that felt terminal to Frank Lampard’s employment. Having played some part in Thomas Tuchel’s arrival, Leicester won the FA Cup final against him in May, before league defeat at Stamford Bridge three days later helped to ensure the Foxes would narrowly miss out on the Champions League yet again. Chelsea are now European champions...