I think there may be a disconnect between what the fans think Solskjaer has been hired to do, and what he has actually been told to do.
Realistically, the club can only sign 2/3 players in this window. We are not attractive to top-level players anymore, and we are now focusing on 21-24 year olds, with clear potential. The idea is to slowly build and improve the squad, whilst moving out the older players, for a fee. While this is taking place, it’s obvious the club want Solskjaer to, at the most, reach 4th. Solskjaer is here to try to steady the ship, and attempt to keep us competing for 4th, while Ed Woodward slowly changes the profile of the squad. The big hope is that he keeps us at 4th.
It will take at least 2/3 years to move Rojo, Darmian, Smalling, Jones, Matic, Fred, Perriera, Sanchez, Lukaku etc out. So, we should not expect a “clearout” - it’s simply impossible to sell so many assets at once. Taken in this light, the club moving to sign up assets to longer contracts makes total sense - it’s the only way to try to ensure the player retains some value when we come to sell him.
We have 3-5 very hard years ahead of us.