Well he is short of options in the middle but Pereira can play there. Mctominay, Garner. It's not like he has no option...and he should be picking literally anyone over a player who is refusing to do their job. If you pick players who don't give a feck it tells the team you don't give a feck.
I think any half decent manager would be doing better, that's the problem. He needs to get a grip of things because some of the stuff happening on the pitch is embarrassing from a manager's point of view, and has nothing to do with the quality of the players.
Having poor players doesn't stop a manager from getting them to work on basic set piece and corner routines, telling someone not to shoot from a free-kick on the touchline, demanding his players press the opposition properly, asking for some basic positional discipline etc. It also doesn't stop him from using his players correctly. The team last night for example was an utter mess...I genuinely couldn't tell you now who was meant to be playing where.
Pereira hasn't shown anything this season to say he's someone who should be leading the line at a conga, let alone Manchester United. McTominay, maybe, but the priority was the league game on Sunday so I could see why he was rested. Garner - like I said, it would have led to a mess of a team with little to no experienced players to guide through the younger players. Matic and Mata have a lot of faults and ideally they should be nowhere near, but there really wasn't much choice. We needed an experienced spine to guide the younger lot, and both of those guys utterly failed in their role.
I don't think any half-decent manager would get much out of this squad which is so imbalanced and lacking in options - we literally have no depth or quality in any position, bar CB and GK. We've seen LvG and Jose, two of the greats, come up with similar performances from players who comprise the bulk of Ole's squad right now. It speaks volumes that the players who are doing well are either Ole's buys, or the kids. That alone should have alarm bells ringing for anyone talking about how a better manager could get more out of this lot.
As it is, I'm most likely resigned to the fate that Ole will probably get sacked at some point this season and we will just have yet another go on the manager merry-go-round and will rinse and repeat in 2-3 years when he inevitably gives up working under the conditions that Ole, Jose, LvG et al have all worked under.
I feel for Ole. Whereas LvG and Jose pissed the best part of £700m up the wall, Ole could only bring in three players, while also having to get rid of the dross without replacing them. It was a recipe for disaster at the outset, and perhaps if we had an egotist in charge like the man we had before, we wouldn't be in quite as precarious a position as we are in now. But Ole put the club before himself, and it looks like he'll pay the ultimate price for it.