All leadership in any shape or form must routinely be challenged to be healthy and work as optimal as possible. The opposite is dictatorship and this form a management always erodes from the inside. The day a leader can’t defend or explain his actions then it’s time to move on.
Ole Gunnar has a lot of good qualities and he’s likable man who act with dignity and professionalism. Maybe he’s to diplomatic and nice for his own good to be on such a hot spot, future will tell. Most successful leaders have some sort of “craziness” inside them. Sir Alex had a famous temperament and he was a notorious gambler when managing United. To fully succeed you need a little bit of luck and you also need to take chances beyond your control.
This season Solskjær has gambled with relying of some of the youngsters to make this work. Losing Herrera and Lukaku means that others has to step up and fill the vacancy of theirs quality. That means that Martial and Rashford needs to deliver more goals then last season. McTominay has to become a reliable starter instead of rotating player who played when he’s fresh and on form. Greenwood has extremely little experience on this level so he’s total gamble.
As you see that’s a lot things that has to work in our managers favor.
Another problem is that two senior starters seems to has lost their leg since last season. Matic looks horrible in pre season and Mata don’t fit our new set up with intensive pressing and fast movements. That leaves us with Lingard as a starter and Gomes as a back up. That’s also a gambling.
I’m delighted with Maguire and AWB, we couldn’t do better in that department. Dan James has interesting qualities but I don’t expect him to be so productive as needed. Future will tell.
In a perfect world a quality dm or a attacking playmaker has been ideal. It’s a little bit frustrating to see Spurs and Arsenal to get the type of players that we needed. Ceballos on a loan. Would be perfect for us.
On Sunday I will be sitting in front of my television with high expectations and praying to God that we win and Ole will be successful. As I have done the last 20 years without missing more then two three games since Ole scored his late winner against Bayern. If we win I will totally change my tune and be ultra positive but if we lose I will raise my concerns and you will probably be annoyed with my criticism.
This was a good reply and it deserves a response.
I don't think anyone is looking to blindly follow the manager without questions being asked. People will ask questions, and that's fine, they're entitled to. The bottom line is however, that we simply do not know what's being said behind the scenes but I would be willing to bet my house on what public facing Solskjaer says and private meeting Solskjaer says are entirely different. So this notion that he's some sort of puppet or yes man is absurd, and I've raised this before but there simply isn't enough people (and no shame in this) who have managed or been part of a senior management team within an organisation. Your politics have to be on point in your going to surviveand you certainly can't say what's on your mind otherwise you're finished. Hence my comment about the pressers, they are to be taken with a pinch of salt and if you get upset about them because he hasn't called Woodward a cnut and said the team is a piece of shit then your expectations fall as short as your life experience does.
We are gambling, but we're gambling in the right way, not on £100m signings that don't want to be here. Gary Neville summed it up well this morning, we need to get the culture right first before we start thinking about challenging. I trust Solskjaer to get that right over any of our other managers who seem to have been here to boost their CV before thinking about where their next job is. As much as I hated Lingard last season, I know he cares about United and wants to be here, the issue we have replacing him is that we can't guarantee his replacement would feel the same so it makes sense to keep some players around until the right replacement comes available and wants to be here.
This might leave us a bit threadbare in places but it's better than having another Sanchez, in the form of a Bale, James or Dybala. We can't afford to keep going down that path.
It may look like other teams have gotten players that we need or look good on paper but we were all buzzing when Di Maria and Falcao came in and look how that turned out. There are no sure things unfortunately so I'm not going to get pre-emptively upset about something that is yet to play out.
For me this feels like the proper start of something, it feels like we've finally got a manager who can see a rebuild and wants to play in a way befitting to Manchester United. I know it won't happen over night and this season will be hit or miss, but if we give him the time he deserves and he gets the targets he wants over January and next summer, as well of getting rid of players like Lukaku who lack the professionalism to be at United, then we'll be in good shape sooner than most think.
We're fast becoming Chelsea, where the manager is the beginning and end of all our problems. We all know this simply isn't true.
Like you, I'm also hoping for a positive start, just so Ole catches a break but I won't be overly devastated if we have some teething problems. Anyway, it's game day tomorrow, let's do it!
