I suppose the most troubling thing about this recent system change is what it says about Ole and the coaching staff.
From their perspective what United needed was a change of formation. The 4-2-3-1 wasn't working, therefore, it must be the formation that's the issue. This is the kind of surface level self-analysis that tries to treat the symptom rather than the cause.
At no point of the course of self-examination have the coaching team internalised their criticism. On the contrary, Ole has doubled-up on the compliments to his coaching staff on the back of a few years of these kind of performances. Instead of determining why these group of elite players are unable to make a 4-2-3-1 look anywhere near fluid from a coaching and tactical perspective, they've run with the notion that the coaching has been exceptional.
So now what? Ole has purchased players with a 4-2-3-1 in mind, and one at 70m, and with relatively few minutes played on the field he's gone gung-ho into a system which further maligns the player he spent two summers chasing. So, rather than analyse the coaching performance of the staff and evaluate how to fix the 4-2-3-1 issues in order to accommodate the vast array of offensive talent in the squad, he's flipped to a system which guarantees that Rashford and Mason (not to mention Sancho) get fewer minutes in favour of the very short-term solution of accommodating Cavani and Ronaldo, which in all likelihood will only last until the end of the season.
You get the feeling that Ole is looking at Tuchel post-Lampard and saying, "That change worked", without realising that Tuchel know how to make that work in the defensive transition to stop counters, how to make that work in the offensive transition to generate numerical advantage on the break, how to make that work in terms of player movement on and off the ball in different phases of the field to create space, overloads, passing angles and all manner of tactical buzzwords. Tuchel puts in the hard work, the hard detailed thinking that makes a system like that function fluidly, and he's able to communicate that effectively and clearly. Ole, by comparison, as heard in his interviews, bemoans the concept of overcomplicating football, as if coaching in fine detail is some exercise in futility. I feel as long as Ole has this reductionist view of the game at the elite level, he'll accept lower standards not only for himself, but for his staff.
it’s an excellent post and really does highlight the issues with a manager that thinks a single player or formation is the solution.