Full credit to Ole for setting us up to go toe-to-toe with the best in the Champions League such as PSG and Leipzig - most pundits gave us no chance to qualify from this group, and probably with good reason. This is a far cry from the dark days of Mourinho when we lost to Sevilla and he talked about Man Utd not being all that after the game. And personally I now look forward to the games, to how how we play and even dare to believe that we can go all the way, only because you can see that the team and Ole truly believe they can take on anyone on their day.
However, in my opinion he did make 2 mistakes yesterday that he must learn from and not repeat.
- Too gung-ho - Playing with a very attacking line-up, whilst laudable, wasn't what we needed to qualify from the group which is the most important objective. To top the group is a bonus if we achieved the former but that's all. He went with 3 strikers - 2 of whom are not on form and haven't been scoring from open play (Rashford and Martial). He knew he was setting it up to be an open game with PSG needing to win too. That means several chances for both teams, having to outscore the opponent and win, and which means our strikers must convert the chances we create. Except, our strikers weren't on form and it transpired that we could carry only 1 of them (Rashford) in the team but not both and Martial's misses are really not a surprise given his recent form for club and country. This was not the game for Martial to hopefully score and start building confidence - that would be more Southampton and West Ham, not because they're weak teams but because there's some way to go in the Premier League yet. With the Champions League Group stages coming to an end in a week, this is the 'business end' where results matter most. Tuchel knows it with all his experience and hence he didn't go all gung-ho and start Di Maria alongside Neymar / Mbappe and also made in-game tweaks to manage the game and scrape out a win (twice in a row to turn the group around). Tuanzebe and Shaw being out makes 3-5-2 difficult but no reason why we could not have gone for a diamond with Matic deep near the centre-backs and the rest dominating the midfield against Veratti / Danilo / Parades. We had VdB / Pogba fit and ready.
- Fred red - It was coming and everyone knew it but he took a very high risk by keeping him on which unsurprisingly did not pay off because (A) we were a man short for 20 minutes whilst being a goal down and (B) we won't have him for Leipzig (Fred was key to counter-pressing Leipzig's high-pressing game in the recent win). The ref is only human and would've known at half-time he's made a mistake not sending Fred off and whilst he won't have looked to consciously make up for the error, we know he would because that's human psychology and we've seen it ever so often. It was therefore naive to leave him on and hope for the best, which I'm sure Ole knows too now.
Both of these points are not made with the benefit of hindsight, rather they could've been proactively addressed before / during the game respectively.
Ole must learn from this and not repeat it, and we'd be better for it. I know folks would say this job is not a work experience but I would argue that the unique requirements of this job and the associated pressures and demands - unparalleled in world football - means this job is a learning experience for any manager regardless of their CV and LvG / Mourinho are examples of that.