The Ole Gunnar in jokes have suddenly stopped raising a smile. Ole at the wheel was fun while it lasted, but the mood has switched in a matter of weeks to the driver being thrown under the bus.
“It was Roy Keane who said that, wasn’t it?” the Manchester United manager asked on Friday in perhaps the nearest he will ever get to an “Et tu, Brute?” utterance. Solskjær is loyal to his friends, of whom he counts Keane as one of the oldest, though he seems to be in denial about what has gone awry since his job at the club was made permanent.
“Of course that is not going to happen,” he said before a game against Chelsea that could define the rest of his managerial career at Old Trafford. “I speak to my players all the time, they know my expectations and standards. I have got three years now and I am going to do whatever I can to make this club successful. It is not like players v managers here. We are all in this together and we are all working hard to improve.”
Those would be the same players, then, who let down Solskjær so badly at Everton at the beginning of the week. “That was an eye-opener,” he admitted. “We weren’t doing our jobs in that game.”
While the performance in the Manchester derby was better – it is hard to imagine how it could possibly have been worse – Solskjær’s plans to train at The Cliff for old times’ sake were unhelpfully leaked beforehand, and in the aftermath of defeat against City it emerged that either Paul Pogba or his representatives are not convinced by the present management team’s suitability for the task.
That is possibly not as traitorous a remark as it may appear, whether or not Pogba actually said it, because few others would claim confidence in a management team responsible for seven defeats in nine matches, losing the last three by an aggregate of nine goals to nil and being distinctly fortunate to interrupt what would have been a six-match losing sequence with a streaky win against West Ham. By any measure United’s slump since Solskjær’s elevation has been alarming.
If he were still auditioning for the job he would have failed the test badly and, given United’s sparkling form during his caretakership, he must be aware that the only thing that has actually changed is his status. Solskjær was also dismissive of reports that the club hierarchy have held crisis meetings over the direction being taken, when really it would be a surprise if they had not.
“I don’t pay much attention to what is in the media and I don’t think players are interested in rumours either,” Solskjær said. “Clearly there are stories being made up left, right and centre, but players are clever enough to see what we are doing. Every manager knows that when you have come into a new club one of two things has happened. Either the club has been doing so well the manager has left for bigger things or the standard has not been what everyone wanted and the manager has paid the price. We are in the second category. I have not inherited a team that keeps on winning and we need time to rebuild.
“If you look at City and Liverpool, who are now setting fantastic standards, you see that Guardiola and Klopp had their bedding-in period before they began to put their stamp on things.”
Though it seems almost cruel to prick Solskjær’s positivity, those bedding-in periods saw Jürgen Klopp take Liverpool to the League Cup final and the Europa League final in his first, incomplete season, and Pep Guardiola finish third in an otherwise fallow first campaign before claiming the Premier League title the following year.
It would take someone even more optimistic than Solskjær to see United turning the situation around as quickly from their present state, though at least the manager is right about one thing: beat Chelsea on Sunday and a top-four finish is still possible, despite the disappointments of the past week. “Three weeks ago you’d have said we would be out of the chase by now with the results we’ve had but, if we start now and every one of my players wakes up to the reality that beating Chelsea would give us a great chance to get in the top four, we can do it,” Solskjær said. “If you had offered us that chance a few weeks ago, we would have taken it.”
The only problem is that Chelsea will feel that Sunday’s game at Old Trafford offers the opportunity to go six points clear of United and all but seal a top-four finish. As Maurizio Sarri has also had to deal with mutinous players, this is what Keane might bill as the Battle of the Bluffers. Which side wants it more? Which set of players will stand up for their manager? Though both Solskjær and Sarri were new appointments this season, it is not too early to begin asking whether both will be in situ for the next.
