The Norwegian rarely reprimands his players in public but could they do with a dressing-down every now and then?Ole Gunnar Solskjær is the touchline Mr Nice Guy whose breezy demeanour may be counterproductive. To find a sighting of the manager scolding a Manchester United player is akin to a search for Lord Lucan: it could take some time.Why does it matter? Because players, even subconsciously, can ease off, or just blithely fail to heed orders. There is, of course, little point in mindless venting with no material aim. But for a No 1 to be able to show who the No 1 is via a mid-game shock-and-awe lecture to stop aberrations is vital or performances will dip. Continue reading...
This season will be a test of whether he is up to the United job, but the draw at Southampton exposed the same old failingsAll teams have off days. No side, no matter how great or how much money has been spent on it, plays to its maximum every week. A draw at Southampton is no disaster, but what must concern Manchester United was the manner of the points dropped last Sunday. It all felt very familiar.They should beat Wolves on Sunday afternoon. United have better players and that is often enough. But already there is doubt and pressure: champions rarely drop more than 20 points over a season these days and already United have squandered one-tenth of that. Drop...
This season will be a test of whether he is up to the United job, but the draw at Southampton exposed the same old failingsAll teams have off days. No side, no matter how great or how much money has been spent on it, plays to its maximum every week. A draw at Southampton is no disaster, but what must concern Manchester United was the manner of the points dropped last Sunday. It all felt very familiar.They should beat Wolves on Sunday afternoon. United have better players and that is often enough. But already there is doubt and pressure: champions rarely drop more than 20 points over a season these days and already United have squandered one-tenth of that. Drop...
Faced with a Villarreal-style low block Manchester United rely on individual brilliance and that is not enough at elite levelWhat if David de Gea had converted his penalty in the shootout against Villarreal? How much difference would it have made had he scored on Wednesday and Gerónimo Rulli had been the goalkeeper to miss from the spot? Was that really it, that one kick, 4.5% of a penalty shootout, was that all that determined whether this season could be considered a success or not for Manchester United? How absurd it should all come down to the capacity of one goalkeeper to beat another.Even at the best of times, De Gea has the air of a doomed llama. Having extended his...
First face second in the Manchester derby on Sunday – and yet has ever a game between the Premier League’s top two sides ever felt so essentially inessential? The look on Sir Alex Ferguson’s face was a curious mixture of disbelief, shock and amusement. “You can’t believe that scoreline,” he said. “First 45 minutes, we were outstanding. The sending off was a killer for us. And after that, we kept attacking. That’s the nature of Manchester United, fine. But it was crazy. Unbelievable.” And then, remarkably, he smiled. Because even though Manchester City had come to Old Trafford and dished out a 6-1 trouncing, Ferguson somehow sensed amid his disappointment that the fundamentals of his side would survive this single...