It hurts me so much to see what's happened to Ole.
I can still remember my young self, crumbled on the floor in agony, watching the clock tick over into 89 minutes against Bayern Munich in 1999. The change that four minutes made, the change Ole made, and to think there were rumours at the start of the season that Spurs were in for him.
I can think of fewer things I want to see more in football than Solskjaer lift a trophy as our coach. He's been, from pretty much the start, one of us and Rob Lee's ankles will attest to that. It was like seeing a fan on the pitch. This kid from nowhere (sorry Norwegians but it really did feel like we got him from nowhere) came in, was our top scorer in his first season and continued to grab vital goals for us. I can still remember how happy I was when he scored against Charlton at the start of 2006-07. I really thought he was back. Him retiring at the end of that season was sad for me. The way he cried at his testimonial. The guy lives and breathes Man Utd. I wanted, I still want, him to succeed so much.
But this pressure is something he has brought on himself. Nobody forced him to go for kamikaze 424 tactics with spread out lines. There is nothing remotely compact or stable about our defensive shape. Its easy to break through. Our lines are so far apart, our midfielders spend so much time chasing that there's acres of space to play in. And that's on him. We've been warned, over and over and over. The bad results in the league. The close calls in Europe. He's been warned and he's made the choice not to tighten it up. We know its a choice to because we've seen him, on four different occasions, beat Pep with tight, organised lines and quick counter attacking football. Ole can coach the team differently than he's doing now but he's deciding not to. Who's to blame for that except him?
You cannot lose at home 5-0 to Liverpool and expect there to be no consequences. Ole knows that. He's been at or around United long enough to know that. Its our worse loss against them since 1925, basically 100 years, and it happened at Old Trafford in front of our own fans. There's nothing you can say to defend that. And claiming, as he did, that at home a Man Utd team needs to be on the front foot is no excuse. We were punished for a suicidal approach to the game and you can only put that on the coach who decided on it. There was no reason to change United from a fairly good counter attacking team into a pathetically bad pressing team.
These stories only highlight that the Board has no faith in him. He's holding the fort just cos they haven't decided who they want to replace him.