SIR ALEX FERGUSON got to the point where Roy Keane had to go — captain or not.
And Ole Gunnar Solskjaer may feel he now needs to let Paul Pogba go.
Paul Pogba hasn’t featured since SeptemberCredit: Reuters
Not that the French midfielder has committed what Fergie and the Old Trafford hierarchy saw as some kind of heinous crime perpetrated by Keane in 2005.
He was not, for instance, recorded by Manchester United’s official TV station MUTV ripping into team-mates.
Darren Fletcher, Rio Ferdinand and John O’Shea got it in the neck from skipper Keane.
The interview was deemed so explosive it was never aired.
Nor did Pogba complain about United’s pre-season training facilities like the Irishman did a few months before his on-camera rant and the sensational sacking that followed in November 2005.
How could Pogba, anyway?
For while his team-mates ground it out in warm-up games across three continents, Pog was still on his holidays after winning the World Cup with France.
Nine days before he played in United’s opening 4–0 win over Chelsea on August 11 he was lying in a hammock on a tropical island.
Roy Keane was sold by Sir Alex Ferguson after his extraordinary MUTV rantCredit: Getty – Contributor
Some might say he was swinging the lead.
That he was still in a huff because his pleas to be allowed to link up with Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid or failing that, to rejoin previous club Juventus, had been blanked.
Now, after three months out with an ankle injury and with Solskjaer preparing for his return ahead of United’s busy Christmas schedule, Pogba is missing again.
This time it is with what is being described as a cold.
There is no suggestion he might deliberately be lying low again — but rather he has been laid low.
Yet he was filmed partying at his brother’s wedding six days ago.
As Keane would often do with his beloved dog Triggs, Pog was pictured walking his own pet on Monday.
He had another, smaller pooch, under his arm.
In fact, Pogba and Keane are near-neighbours in the trendy Hale area of Cheshire where dog- walking is quite the thing along its leafy lanes.
What is not the thing from Pogba is the passion and commitment that Solskjaer wants from all his players — things his legendary Scottish mentor Fergie always demanded.
The Norwegian, it seems, has not stopped making excuses for the club’s £89million record buy since walking through the door as Jose Mourinho’s replacement a year ago tomorrow.
Even when he effectively came right out and said he wanted to leave, Solskjaer never berated him publicly.
Even yesterday, following news that the 26-year-old midfielder would be missing again, the United boss was so careful in what he said.
Solskjaer revealed: “Of all things, he’s struck down ill now.
“He’s been off for two or three days — three days probably — so that’s not beneficial. That’s probably set him back quite a bit.”
With no intense training following so long out, Pogba would not have played tonight’s Carabao Cup quarter-final against Colchester anyway.
Nor Sunday’s visit to Watford — meaning he will have missed 21 United games this season — and it could now be the new year before he is ready to start a game.
And that, perhaps, may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
Solskjaer has been talking up the new togetherness within his dressing room.
It may only be a coincidence but Pogba has hardly been a part of that, having spent time in Dubai recovering from his injury. It could be said he has become a man apart.
As was Keane in the latter stages of his illustrious Old Trafford career.
In airport lounges on European trips he could often be spotted reading a paperback well away from his team-mates.
Before he was sacked a year ago today, Mourinho declared Pogba a “virus” in the squad.
Solskjaer, with things much more serene than when he arrived, may feel such a condemnation is deeply unfair.
Yet he has fostered stability without Pogba within a workers’ collective that has begun to string fine results together.
Emojis and super-egos may no longer fit in.
Still, the United manager indicated that, for him, it was still all about patience with Pogba.
He stressed: “As I’ve said so many times, Paul’s a top, top player that we want to see playing his best football at Man United.
“We just need to get him fit and match-fit.
“It might be half an hour, 45, 60, 90 — who knows — for the first game.
“We’re working hard to get him back but now he’s ill.”
Patience may be a virtue and Solskjaer clearly appears to have pot-loads of it in public at least.
But in private he must surely feel he has been wasting time and effort on a lost cause.
Indeed, it is understood executive vice–chairman Ed Woodward, like Solskjaer, is moving towards a watershed moment with the star.
The problem with Pogba is that he has not shown the kind of virtues that his boss has been instilling into the rest of the squad.
Unless things change radically — and soon — it can only be a question of when in Solskjaer time the parties reach the point of no return and there is a parting of the ways with Pogba.
Man Utd boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer confirms that Paul Pogba is suffering from illness after brothers wedding
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
