Solskjaer's legacy and his future

[Foxbatt]

His legacy is that he was so incompetent that the club was forced to sack him after giving everything he wanted. He even got Sancho in the end and didn't know how to use him. To me now he is worse than Moyes. Moyes at least managed and coached a decent size club and had a plan even though it was a bad plan. Ole had no idea at all.
If we don't make the top 4 it's all down to him.

 

[The Brown Bull]

Very good player who could do a top quality job as a striker or right wing.
Woeful manager.
That’s it.

 

[Amir]

People tend to forget that we could actually spinned further down after Mourinho. Please think about that for a second.

I have thought about it. And looking at the clubs which Mourinho left after typical toxic times (Chelsea I, Real, Chelsea II), they were fine afterwards.

When things go bad with Mourinho, they go real bad. The good thing is that once he leaves, things are bound to pick up because there's no one worse in football than a Mourinho in toxic period.

 

[VidaRed]

https://thefootballdugout.com/2020/02/18/how-ole-gunnar-solskjaer-protected-a-rapist/

Scandalous if true. But why are we hearing this for the first time now ?

I think it might baseless accusations because otherwise it would have been plasted all over the caf by ole outers and opposition fans while ole was still the wheel.

 

[Amir]

Scandalous if true. But why are we hearing this for the first time now ?

I think it might baseless accusations because otherwise it would have been plasted all over the caf by ole outers and opposition fans while ole was still the wheel.

Is it possible that "Ole outers" were never quite out there for character assassination, but just didn't think he was a good enough manager and focused on that?...

 

[tomaldinho1]

His legacy is that he was so incompetent that the club was forced to sack him after giving everything he wanted. He even got Sancho in the end and didn't know how to use him. To me now he is worse than Moyes. Moyes at least managed and coached a decent size club and had a plan even though it was a bad plan. Ole had no idea at all.
If we don't make the top 4 it's all down to him.

This is basically it. Everyone talks about the ‘negativity’ around the club but Mou wasn’t some kind of restless phantom, haunting the corridors of Carrington. Once he left, the negativity left with him.

Ole had the most time, least expectations and the most backing and he won less than everyone bar Moyes who didn’t even last a season.

 

[Ronaldo's ego]

Bluffer

 

[Blood Mage]

He did well to finish 2nd last season, albeit under unique and unusual circumstances. That still didn't justify him being our manager though, he was never up to it and the board should have stuck with their original plan to part ways with him after 6 months and get Poch. I hope sentimentality never impacts their decision making again and they've learned their lesson.

 

[devilish]

So we’ll highlight two players who’ve had a bad start to the season and just ignore any other players he signed;

Sancho
Cavani
Bruno
DvB
Ronaldo
James (sold at a profit)
Telles
Amad & Pellestri (both look talented)

AwB is a write off as far as I’m concerned. A £50m write off at that, which is kind of inexcusable, we’d be lucky to get £15m for him if we tried to sell him, but there’s no doubt Ole signed some very good players. Both for his system and that will be usable by RR or any manager we brought in.
Maguire isn’t £80m of defender, no getting away from that, but he’s still a perfectly serviceable CB when put in a system and managed by a manager who knows what he’s doing. His price is irrelevant, we have the cash and he services a need. Given the benefit of hindsight, half the caf were happy for us to blow £100m on KK 18 months ago, not sure anybody would be happy to nail their colours to that mast at this point

I don’t get the Ole outers. No he wasn’t good enough in the end for us, but that doesn’t automatically mean everybody needs to piss on everything he did for us.

No we didn’t win anything, yes we did achieve back to back top 4 places (first time since SAF left).

Yes he made a couple of questionable signings. The vast majority of his signings were players we were happy with as a fan base. With the exception of Maguire (due to the price) nobody complained about any of the others as they were being brought in. Or as was the case with Cavani (past it), Bruno (padded figures in a shit league) Ronaldo (old and past it), those posters were proven very wrong.

Fine, be pleased he’s left but can we just leave the bile and the revisionism at the door and not piss on the poor guys corpse. He made some very good, albeit obvious signings, made united watchable again, which barring a few streaks we hadn’t been for 8 fecking years and pretty much gave his all and cared for the club.

I was referring to how they will fit into gegenpressing. However let's tackle it from your aspect

Heaton - I could never understand Ole's obsession with experienced GKs. Having 3 experienced GKs caused him headaches during the Henderson-Romero-DDG era and saw Romero leaving on a free. So adding Heaton after losing Romero is moronic especially since he also gave Grant a contract extension.

AWB- He reminds me of FBs you would see during the 80s early 90s ie failed CBs who were incredibly solid in defending but have no idea in going forward. He'd probably struggle massively in gegenpressing and with Ten Hag/Pochs

Maguire - God knows what was crossing Ole's mind in allowing the club to spend 80m on him. He's too slow, his positioning is meah and he's certainly not a leader. Once again he's an old fashioned type of CB, a thin skinned version of Terry Butcher

Varane - the Rolls Royce of CBs. Unfortunately he's a bit injury prone which is a problem with gegenpressing as it requires every player to be in prime condition

McShane - McShane wasn't even United level in his prime let alone at age 35. Did the U23 really needed such average CB and did the coaching staff needed another Ole's matey as coach?

Telles - he's the reverse AWB ie his attacking game is flawless but he's got no idea of defending. Mancini tried everything with the lad to teach him how to defend to no avail. He'd probably survive if United switch to a 3-5-2 system

Bruno - mint signing. I can see him do well with modern managers

VDB - A modern CM who can play both as no 10, as a cultured B2B player or be groomed to a deep lying playmaker. God knows why Ole refused to play him especially since he played McFred instead.

Ronaldo - he'll struggle with gegenpressing in its pure form so Rangnick will be forced to make amends to it. Once again he's a signing Ole would do to paper the cracks

James - once again an incredibly outdated type of player. Sure we made a 10m profit out of him but we would have been better off using those 15m to actually buy a player who might have succeeded with us.

Pellistri-Diallo - they were barely ever given a sniff of first team football despite we needed a RW terribly back then. Which comes to no surprise considering that Ole would ignore talent like Hannibal Mejbri as well, preferring to give contracts to the likes of Mata instead. United way and all that

Sancho - a top top level winger who'll benefit immensely from gegenpressing. Similarly to VDB God only knows why Ole didn't play him regularly

Cavani - great short term signing. He'd probably suit gegenpressing better then Ronaldo would but he's injury prone (read my comment on Varane)

So we can group all signings into 5 categories

A- Those unsuited to the modern game (James, AWB, Maguire and possibly Telles)
B- Promising kids/talent he barely ever played and were left rotting on the bench (VDB, Sancho, Pellistri, Diallo)
C- Mateys (McShane, Heaton and to a lesser extent Ronaldo. We would probably have had King in that list if Ole had the final say on that)
D- Top players whom for one reason or another are past their prime and will probably struggle under the excessive pressure of playing gegenpressing (Varane, Cavani and Ronaldo)
E- Bruno.

 

[UnofficialDevil]

This is basically it. Everyone talks about the ‘negativity’ around the club but Mou wasn’t some kind of restless phantom, haunting the corridors of Carrington. Once he left, the negativity left with him.

Ole had the most time, least expectations and the most backing and he won less than everyone bar Moyes who didn’t even last a season.

 

[Jackal981]

Wonderful player and utter garbage manager. But he build a pretty decent team for RR to take us to the next level

 

[ExoduS]

The leaders of the club (if we have leaders) should have recognized sometimes last year that Ole doesn't have it. Ole always had a game or string of games that saved his job... but not this year. I still think bringing Ronaldo is what eventually lead to complete downfall of Ole. That's when the squad lost the balance and when Ole lost authority. I don't think bringing Ronaldo was a mistake, but we needed to offload at least Martial... Too many mouths to feed and Ole is too nice to do the "hard" things.

I hope he has learned a lot of the 3 years and that he will be able to become a decent championship level manager. No shame at coaching at championship.

 

[shamans]

As players that golden squad will always be held highly but ole will and should serve as an example that Man United is about the club first, not mates FC.

 

[SAFMUTD]

In a few years the bitter memories of him as a manager will fade and we'll remember him as Ole the player.

 

[Nevilles.Wear.Prada]

As a player? Great.
As a caretaker? Good.
As a manager? Well..


But u cant blame him for
1) getting the job full time
2) allowed to make those high profile signings
3) allowed to stay after villareal.

Alot of this is boards mistake really. Hardly surprising molde and cardiff manager isn't our standard.
Still a legend for me.

 

[Rolaholic]

Cult hero and club legend as a player, small fish in a big pond as a manager

Nothing wrong with that, not every ex-player is destined to be a great manager

 

[Bebestation]

Thanks Ole!

Thanks for being a decent (5.5- 6.5/10) interim type manager and helping us settle a bit after Jose's toxicity and Van Gaals destruction of the squad during their tenure.

The fact people are still complaining about him still after he has gone says alot about the fan's mindset at the club.

I like Ole's team more than Jose's, Van Gaals and Moyes's - felt I could watch our matches with a bit of heart and passion. Shame that success wasn't there - but to be honest, the success achieved by Van gaal and Mourinho was not that wonderful to me.

A player who managed the club because he loves it and was given the job by the poor owners was not really his fault. I think people got fustrated with Ole's freedom to manage a long time - which is again something I blame the owners for rather than exactly Solskjaer.

 

[AaronRedDevil]

Another great video from Adita.

 

[FootyGirl88]

Scandalous if true. But why are we hearing this for the first time now ?

I think it might baseless accusations because otherwise it would have been plasted all over the caf by ole outers and opposition fans while ole was still the wheel.

I honestly thought people knew but just chose to ignore it. There were stories about it on Twitter too.

Tweet

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[Lee565]

Bringing in a load over priced english defenders that will be a burden to get rid off for years to come, it is unbelievable that we paid 80 million for a donkey in Maguire that has no leadership qualities whilst chelsea got a leader and a brilliant defender in thiago for free who is probably still faster and more mobile than Maguire even in the twilight of career.

Also watching over our midfield becoming weaker than it has ever been under all the other post fergie managers with herrera and basically pogba (our best two midfielders before he arrived) as well walking for free whilst he has been in charge.

 

[Pexbo]

Bringing in a load over priced english defenders that will be a burden to get rid off for years to come, it is unbelievable that we paid 80 million for a donkey in Maguire that has no leadership qualities whilst chelsea got a leader and a brilliant defender in thiago for free who is probably still faster and more mobile than Maguire even in the twilight of career.

Also watching over our midfield becoming weaker than it has ever been under all the other post fergie managers with herrera and basically pogba (our best two midfielders before he arrived) as well walking for free whilst he has been in charge.

Did you miss the bit where Maguire was by far our best defender for 2 seasons?

 

[wolvored]

Did you miss the bit where Maguire was by far our best defender for 2 seasons?

If true does that really say a lot? For £80 mill he should have been better than Liverpools and Cities best defender. In fact wasnt he a world record price for a defender? FFS how can you defend that?

 

[Idxomer]

Sir Alex and Van Gaal were much more likeable. Ole just smiled a lot. His exit was a good riddance exit for me.

He was likeable as a player but I found his whole managerial persona off-putting.

 

[GreatDane]

I honestly thought people knew but just chose to ignore it. There were stories about it on Twitter too.

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I didn't know and apparently neither did many others.
Ole scored a legendary goal but this leaves a sour taste.

 

[stw2022]

He inherited a side that finished 2nd and won two cups and progressed them to a side that finished second and won nothing. And had more time and more money to achieve less. If he didn’t have the playing career with us he did there would not be a single argument that he was anywhere close to Mourinho regardless of how toxic that turned in the final months

 

[Max_United]

I honestly thought people knew but just chose to ignore it. There were stories about it on Twitter too.

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There is also a good invetsigation on his business dealings, agent relationships and conflicts of interest, which surprisingly is rarely if ever discussed here.
http://josimarfootball.com/the-double-agent/

One of the key parts:

"As the coach of Manchester United’s reserve team, Molde FK and Cardiff City, Solskjær has been a part of 21 transfers of players represented by the agency he himself had co-founded"

Before I am accused of "character assassination" - I do not necessarily think that he is a bad person and of course innocent until proven guilty. We all know that Fergie was no saint, and many managers have problematic parts of their biographies. I just think that the picture of Ole as a person with superior-to-other-managers moral qualities (which is often drawn here) is very questionable.

There is also a good article on Athletic describing his mistreatment of multiple players - suddenly telling Smalling to go a couple of days before the end of transfer window, promising Lingard game time and reneging, getting pissed off at VdB agent comments and deliberately freezing him out, asking the team for feedback/what is wrong and then immediately saying "I am the manager it is my decision" when Baily pointed out that one of the things is wrong is favoritism and picking a blatantly unfit Maguire over him. Again, not the worst things and happens with most managers I guess - but as one of the players put it according to the article "Ole is a nice guy but not a good man manager, people tend to confuse the two".

 

[LazyGoal]

I have thought about it. And looking at the clubs which Mourinho left after typical toxic times (Chelsea I, Real, Chelsea II), they were fine afterwards.

When things go bad with Mourinho, they go real bad. The good thing is that once he leaves, things are bound to pick up because there's no one worse in football than a Mourinho in toxic period.

That is a fair point. But I also think our board could have done something worse than Ole.

 

[Lee565]

Did you miss the bit where Maguire was by far our best defender for 2 seasons?

Considering his only competition for best defender was lindelof, that doesn't say much, he's barely an improvement over smalling and I honestly preferred blind over him.

 

[tomaldinho1]

I honestly thought people knew but just chose to ignore it. There were stories about it on Twitter too.

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I hadn’t seen this at all. Shocking if any of it is true.

 

[Rightnr]

Did you miss the bit where Maguire was by far our best defender for 2 seasons?

I'm sure he was also the best defender in the teams that got relegated. That says more about his competiton than him as a footballer.

Amazing the kind of revisionism goes on here with regard to OGS, his tenure and the players he's signed for insane money.

 

[Max_United]

People here are strange. Man Utd was a car crash when he took over. Now the racing car is back on the circuit, or at least was after last season, and the overall health of the club is where it must be.
People tend to forget that we could actually spinned further down after Mourinho. Please think about that for a second.

But, having said that, this fall have been might strange:
• I agree with Merson on Ronaldo. Ole had a plan for every player that would work with the style of play we had for the seasons that gave us 3rd and 2nd. Ronaldo is a great finisher, but that IS a different plan.
• Ole always talked about the importance of runing the most and earning the right to win a match — this fall not at all — why was that? We have crazy bad physical stats so far this season.
• Ole knows tactics, at least counter tactics. In Molde they where fine with dominating tactics. Why he know talked of motivational bs like «be the best version of your self» «every boy want to play for manutd — you are the lucky ones» is just very very strange.
• all these injurys, it really messed up the little rythm that we had
• McGuire and Shaw. So bad it is actually Ole’s fault to keep them on.
• not moving Pogba on. It is Ole’s fault. Pogba is just not what we need for those money, and he should know it. The whole damn thing is down right stupied, and if a manager cant see that, maybe he should not be manager.
• the mismanagment of Rashford from a month before the back injury against Newcastle. And not making sure he fixed his shoulders right after last season, at the cost of the euros.

All in all, I think his legacy will be okay. Not what it could have been if he’d been able to carry on from last season, but not as bad as some of you lot might think right now.

I wanted Jose gone long before we sacked him, but your post is a prime example of double standards that are often applied when comparing Ole to Jose.

You are picking the worst time under Jose - before he was sacked and for Ole you are picking the end of last season. If we compare like-for-like:

1. End of last full season (May 18 Jose, May 21 Ole). Both 2nd places in the league, under Jose 8 points better. Under Jose we qualified from CL group, under Ole we did't. Made EL final under Ole, but under Jose we actually won it in previous season. So basically the results are slightly better under Jose. Here on Caf the manner of defeats (vs Villareal & Sevilla) and general on-pitch performances lead to some doubts about the manager, prevailing opinion is that "we need a couple of players to challenge" in both cases.

2. Summer after last full season. Under Jose we sign Grant, Dalot and Fred. Under Ole we sign Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo. The result: Jose tries to gets himself sacked, we are 6th when he is, Ole does not try to get himself sacked, we are in a worse free fall, on fewer points and 8th whilst having bought much stronger players (somehow you did not mention that we could fall further under Ole). many players are unhappy and lost belief in manager in both cases - the only difference is that Ole is better liked on personal level which does not really matter once both managers are out of the door.

Not arguing against the fact that the squad is better now, but from what we know it is the result of a work of a transfer committee where the voice of the manager is just one of the voices. So any credit (or criticism for that matter) of Ole should be limited here - which is bad news for Ole defenders since without it they do not have much to stand on beyond "better atmosphere", which is frankly not much of an achievement especially considering all Ole's flaws.

 

[Greck]

Scandalous if true. But why are we hearing this for the first time now ?

I think it might baseless accusations because otherwise it would have been plasted all over the caf by ole outers and opposition fans while ole was still the wheel.

poor form ,friend. Went from asking why Ole skeptics didn't weaponize details from an alleged rape to dismissing it and brushing it under the rug. It's not actually the 1st time, look at the date, it's Feb 2020, it was actually posted on the caf at the time but many would rather avoid it than make speculations about its credibility or use it to push an agenda. Even sounds like a good way to get one banned and deservedly. Also has jack to do with being a shite football manager.

 

[Rajma]

Legacy? Lowered standards where finishing 30+ points behind league leaders was being celebrated as progress while mostly playing god awful football. He was good at conning people with United DNA nonsense I’ll give him that.

 

[LazyGoal]

I honestly thought people knew but just chose to ignore it. There were stories about it on Twitter too.

All of this is bs. Norwegian journalists dont touch this. There has been a trail - and he walked free. Long after Ole was coach that dude moved to russia, and are now wanted for not meeting for trail in another case.

Josimar is a paranoid norwegian football magazine (where all of this originate from) that has made a brand on spectulations and construction the case based on what they want their outcomme to be. It might be a good business idea, but it is not a reliabel source or proper journalistic work. If there was something in this, and Ole had dirty hands, the police would have been all over it along time ago.

 

[LazyGoal]

I wanted Jose gone long before we sacked him, but your post is a prime example of double standards that are often applied when comparing Ole to Jose.

You are picking the worst time under Jose — before he was sacked and for Ole you are picking the end of last season. If we compare like-for-like:

1. End of last full season (May 18 Jose, May 21 Ole). Both 2nd places in the league, under Jose 8 points better. Under Jose we qualified from CL group, under Ole we did't. Made EL final under Ole, but under Jose we actually won it in previous season. So basically the results are slightly better under Jose. Here on Caf the manner of defeats (vs Villareal & Sevilla) and general on-pitch performances lead to some doubts about the manager, prevailing opinion is that "we need a couple of players to challenge" in both cases.

2. Summer after last full season. Under Jose we sign Grant, Dalot and Fred. Under Ole we sign Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo. The result: Jose tries to gets himself sacked, we are 6th when he is, Ole does not try to get himself sacked, we are in a worse free fall, on fewer points and 8th whilst having bought much stronger players (somehow you did not mention that we could fall further under Ole). many players are unhappy and lost belief in manager in both cases - the only difference is that Ole is better liked on personal level which does not really matter once both managers are out of the door.

Not arguing against the fact that the squad is better now, but from what we know it is the result of a work of a transfer committee where the voice of the manager is just one of the voices. So any credit (or criticism for that matter) of Ole should be limited here - which is bad news for Ole defenders since without it they do not have much to stand on beyond "better atmosphere", which is frankly not much of an achievement especially considering all Ole's flaws.

Well, you seem to forget that football under Jose and Van Gaal was allmost imposible to watch. I’d agree with you on that was the case for Ole as well the last two months (just in a very different manner), but the 3rd and 2nd place under Ole was mostly entertaining.

That is a hugh factor in all of this as well.

Another hugh point, is that we got 2nd due to Chelsea and Liverpool’s injurys and problems — not becouse we where THAT good. I think Ole made the mistake of attributing this fact to our own performance, and by that thinking we where ready to challange for the title —we are absolutly nowhere near a 90+ points season. Ole should know that.

 

[Amir]

That is a fair point. But I also think our board could have done something worse than Ole.

Maybe. And even so, that should have ended six months later once he served his purpose.

 

[pcaming]

I thought Ole was cleared of all this a while ago…

 

[NotThatSoph]

Scandalous if true. But why are we hearing this for the first time now ?

I think it might baseless accusations because otherwise it would have been plasted all over the caf by ole outers and opposition fans while ole was still the wheel.

It's old, it's known. I'm not going to bother reading the article, but this is what happened:

In 2016 Molde (the club) and Ole bought Babacar Sarr from Sogndal. He already had rape accusations against him at that point, but I don't know if that was known to them. He was then accused and charged for another rape while a player for Molde, it was a big media case but his identity wasn't officially known at first (the club and Ole knew, obviously). The club chose to not suspend him, and Ole chose to keep playing him. How people feel about that is up to them, he wasn't convicted of anything.

Ole then made him captain, while under investigation for rape, which is far more dodgy. After a match later that season the players went out partying and he raped again. Everyone at the club knew that he was accused of raping someone in that exact situation before.

In February 2019 Molde let him go to a Russian club for free. He was a good player from the perspective of the Norwegian league, so worth millions. Coincidentally it's pretty hard for the Norwegian court to get hold of someone in Russia because of no extradition treaty, so they couldn't. Molde helped him get away, deliberately. This was three months after Ole went to United, so it's on the club and not him. Jim Solbakken, a very dodgy agent who's a close friend and business partner of Ole, was involved.

Sarr later went to Saudi Arabia, and as far as I know it's unknown where he is now. Interpol have been looking for 2 years.

So to sum up, there is absolutely no doubt that Molde acted reprehensibly and morally bankrupt. There's also no doubt that Jim Solbakken was involved. How it reflects on Ole is a bit more murky.

 

[vanderpants]

Old news, why are they jumping on this again?

 

[Eplel]

AWB- He reminds me of FBs you would see during the 80s early 90s ie failed CBs who were incredibly solid in defending but have no idea in going forward. He'd probably struggle massively in gegenpressing and with Ten Hag/Pochs

I know it sounds unbelievable, but AWB started as as a right winger.

I understand a full back not being excellent up front, and if he at least tried himself I would be content. But what enrages me about AWB is the cowardly way he plays. Of course, in our current squad he's really useful because of his excellent defensive skills, if you swap him for TAA for example, someone who would often expose his CBs and DMs, then you will truly see how bad Maguire and McFred are.