Club confirm Solskjaer has left United

Manchester United have today confirmed that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is no longer the manager. Following the embarrassing 4-1 defeat against a poor Watford side on Saturday, on the back of humiliating defeats against rivals Liverpool and Manchester City, his position at the club became untenable.

The club statement confirmed that Michael Carrick will take charge of managerial duties for the games ahead until an interim manager is named.

Ole will always be a legend at Manchester United and it is with regret that we have reached this difficult decision. While the past few weeks have been disappointing, they should not obscure all the work he has done over the past three years to rebuild the foundations for long-term success.
Ole leaves with our sincerest thanks for his tireless efforts as Manager and our very best wishes for the future. His place in the club’s history will always be secure, not just for his story as a player, but as a great man and a Manager who gave us many great moments. He will forever be welcome back at Old Trafford as part of the Manchester United family.
Michael Carrick will now take charge of the team for forthcoming games, while the club looks to appoint an interim manager to the end of the season.

Rumours suggest that Zinedine Zidane is the most popular choice among the board to replace Solskjaer until the end of the season. The Frenchman has been out of management since leaving Real Madrid for a second time last May.

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2 Comments

CR November 21, 2021

Ole is a very good underdog and counterattacking manager but where it’s all gone wrong for him this season is the attempt at transitioning the team towards a more possession-based style of play.

In fairness the signing of Ronaldo, as good as he has been, has probably also caused an imbalance in terms of the player personnel which Ole was unable to sort out. His original intention was probably to let Cavani and Greenwood rotate at CF and play Sancho to the right and Rashford to the left. Not a bad idea, but then Ronaldo came in and pushed Greenwood to the right while Sancho got pushed to the bench. Which caused the imbalance.

Something another manager should be able to recitify quite easily.

Ole’s management of the likes of Vdb, Telles, Bailly and others also leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when you consider the bad form and injuries of come of his favorites.

Another error was that he kept too many players in the squad and failed to bring in a CDM/DLP and rotation option for RB.

Addressing those two positions in the summer was absolutely pivotal if he wanted to have any sort of chance of challenging for the title.

Also; Mejbri, Elanga and others should have been given more minutes than they have.

The best time for this change of manager was in the summer after the EU league final defeat and the second best time was after the defeat to City ahead of the most recent international break. (Btw – how many international breaks are there this season? Used to be only two.) The Ole Out:ers were by and large nowhere to be seen at that time but even if they had voiced their opinion I would have said that there’s no way you can sack him after he exceeded everyone’s expectations and finished second.

However, with all that being said, at least the change has been made now and all and all Ole has still taken the club/team forward. A new manager with different tactics and coaching can probably turn this squad into a tite-challeging one with a few quality additions. Something which was not the case when Ole took over.

Vdb and Sancho looked good against Watford and should both be in the starting eleven going forward, I thought.

Good and well-phrased statement by the club.

People can say what they want about Ole and his coaching staff, but the fact is that they managed to incrementally and progressively improve results until this season, when things fell apart for the reasons I mentioned. So I think a bit of nuance is in order when analysing things.

Longer term the following players will leave (for varying reasons): Jones, Dalot, Matic, Pogba, Pereira, Lingard, Mata, Martial, Cavani.

No less than 9 players.

Then the following could be the squad - with two players for each position:

LF: Rashford, Elanga
CF: Ronaldo, Greenwood
RF: Sancho, Amad

LM: Fernandes, Mejbri
CDM: NEW SIGNING, Galbraith
RM: McTominay, Vdb

LB: Shaw, Telles
CB1: Varane, Tuanzebe
CB2: Maguire, Lindelof
RB: Awb, Laird

GK: Ddg, Heaton

Squad fill out player: Fred

Loan out: Henderson, Williams, Mengi, Garner, Levitt, Pellistri, Chong, Sholetire and others

IMO that's a pretty good squad. And that's with only one new signing. If you throw in another RB, CB and/or Haaland into the mix then you're really talking. So basically, 1-4 new signings - which theoretically should be doable over two transfer windows.

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