SACK a legendary Champions League-winner; win the Champions League.
The template is there for Manchester United, laid down by Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea last season.
And although getting rid of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer wouldn’t guarantee the Red Devils becoming European champions next May, it sure as hell would give the club a better chance.
Frank Lampard’s dismissal in January was so controversial with large swathes of Chelsea’s support that Abramovich actually felt the need to make an almost-unprecedented personal statement about it.
But four months later, Thomas Tuchel’s Blues had conquered Europe after adding structure and a clear identity to an excellent squad.
United now have world-class players in around nine of their 11 starting positions, and plenty of squad depth too.
Yet they are under-performing on a spectacular scale because they do not have an elite manager and, as a result, do not look like a proper team.
Abramovich recognised a similar situation at Stamford Bridge last season, reacted swiftly and reaped his rewards.
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The chances of United doing the same any time soon is remote, according to club sources.
Solskjaer, United’s one-time baby-faced assassin, is now their bullet-proof manager. And nobody can quite understand why.
Since the jubilation of Cristiano Ronaldo’s homecoming, a flattering 4-1 win over Newcastle in September, Solskjaer’s side have won twice in seven matches.
And both of those victories were fortuitous — secured by an injury-time penalty save from David De Gea at West Ham and an injury-time winner from Ronaldo at home against Villarreal.
Saturday’s trip to Leicester seemed to sum up a club which makes all the wrong decisions — from making the 100-mile journey to the Midlands by plane to a shambolic performance in a 4-2 defeat.
While the rest of football goes carbon-zero, Solskjaer’s United are tactics-zero.
They lack intelligence. They lack a plan with and without the ball.
Paul Pogba’s heated post-match comments, including the claims that United ‘need to change something’ and ‘find the right mentality and tactics’, were taken in some quarters as exasperation with Solskjaer.
If that is so, who could blame him?
We are probably about to re-enter the ‘blame Pogba’ stage of the endless United news cycle.
Pogba was poor at the King Power but the Frenchman has seven Premier League assists this season — three more than any other top-flight player.
And the midfielder won another trophy with France in the Nations League last week, with footage again emerging of him giving an impassioned team-talk in the dressing room, just as it did during their triumphant 2018 World Cup campaign.
Pogba is not a troublemaker. Sure, his agent may be a bit of a tit, but he is a footballer with high standards who doesn’t suffer mediocrity gladly.
And Ronaldo isn’t the problem. He is still a world-class goalscorer. It’s just that he was never likely to be the solution, either.
United needed a top-class holding midfielder, but instead they chose the crowd-pleasing, social- media-blockbuster signing.
And it was another nostalgic move, too. Just as Solskjaer’s appointment was. United’s supporters used to accuse Liverpool fans of living in the past. Now the situation is reversed.
Much more of this and the official club colours will no longer be red, white and black but sepia with a rose tint.
United now face the fixture list from hell — before the end of next month, they meet all five of their fellow European Super League breakaway conspirators, as well as a Champions League double-header against group leaders Atalanta.
The over-achieving, low-budget Italians who terrify European football’s entitled old guard are capable of winning at Old Trafford on Wednesday night, despite having an entire team which cost less than £77million Jadon Sancho.
By the end of November, Solskjaer’s side could be out of the Champions League and effectively out of a Premier League title race which will be contested by three elite managers in Tuchel, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp.
Solskjaer is the odd man out among managers of England’s top four clubs and it is no coincidence that unlike Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool, they aren’t as good as they should be.
Nobody at Chelsea delighted in Lampard’s sacking — he had been in charge for only 18 months, his first season had been encouraging, he helped re-connect the club to its root and his affection for the Blues was undoubted.
And if United ever sack Solskjaer, few people will rejoice in that, either. He is a good man, who smiles a lot and talks fondly of the Old Trafford club’s past.
But nostalgia is an affliction and sentiment is bunk in elite football.
As Abramovich knows full well.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
