I'm all over the map on Ole. The lack of tactical awareness bothers me but maybe its growing into the job and some people take longer. He has his good days and bad days, but the good days need to start overwhelming the bad days. Is he good enough to win an FA cup, probably - good enough to win EPL, maybe - good enough to win ECL, that's where it gets really itchy and scratchy for me. Maybe EPL isn't as strong this year as the last couple at the top and that helps after a few bad performances, but you really can't sack a manager who's in 3rd place. At the end of the season if the tactics are not consistently above the current level then maybe you have to think about a change if they finish outside top 3 or 4.
Generally I would say an ultimate goal like winning the CL (which Alex Ferguson did twice in 23 years at Utd and Roberto di Matteo did once in one year for Chelsea) is not a good day-to-day measure of how a manager functions. Generally, a manager that manages to improve a club and a team month by month, year by year, in a sustainable way, will have the better chances of paving the way for such trophies. The issue is to judge wether there is progress or not. In the case of Fergie, it was difficult for the fans to measure that progress for the first three to four years, but the insiders at the club saw the progress being made in how the club was run, the culture at the club, the character of the team personalities.
At many clubs, there are club hierarchies with spoting directors, technical directors, sports knowledge on the board, in the director seat, or other parts of the club that assemble much of that progress for a new coach, trainer or entrendor to come in and ‘light the fuse’. United has not been run like that, which is why the most interesting progress Solskjær has made as it appears to me is not regarding results or organized attacking patterns, but is more about getting the parts og the club to co-operate about the spirts development, build sports culture, get youth, senior and scouting to work more as a whole and on a basis of football thinking rather than business thinking, and getting the right kind of personalities in (and out).
That, in addition, results have actually been slowly creeping upwards since his first preseason/transfer window is to me a bonus, acknowledging how badly we were run as a football club since Fergie and Gill quit, what state the club apparently was in when Solskjær took over.
On thing I’d phrase differently, though, is that regarding tactical deployments (choice of formations, strategies and players for positions), Solskjær has done well, and many times been applauded bytactical experts like trainers for his tactical choices before and within games. Many have noticed how often he have made substitutions or formation changes that have altered games.
The main tactical weakness seems more to be about ‘recognizable playing style’, first and foremost in attack. Which is a very valid critique by the way. It is also a trade off, however. More collective cooperation increases the ability to succeed with the same strategy against most opponents. More individual freedom tends to give more flexibility to get something out of very different tactical challenges. Whereas Guardiola is an extreme example of the former, Solskjær, like his main mentor, puts more weight toward the latter. It looks very different, both when it works but particularily when it doesn’t. But both strategies are valid.
Now, Guardiola and Ferguson are two of the best football leaders in history, and they became that through very different processes. The time to compare Solskjær with their status is not now, rather at the end of his carreer in thirty years time. As for now, the relevant perspective I think is,is there progress, at various levels. So far, I’d argue there has been.
