It was not surprising that Paul Pogba was chosen to front the team message in the aftermath of Manchester United’s 4-2 defeat to Leicester on Saturday – the fourth time in eight games they have surrendered points this season already.
When United suffer these sorts of humbling results one of the star men is wheeled out to explain how the team will come together, work on their performances and get better.
The striving for improvement at Old Trafford is something these players have been allowed to wallow in since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s arrival. Having been effectively told by Jose Mourinho they weren’t good enough, Solskjaer cut back on expectation and gave the squad time to improve.
But we’re now three years into the Solskjaer project and still United aren’t where a club of their size, history and ambition needs to be. Having spent heavily in successive transfer windows, this unit has barely advanced from previous post-Ferguson reigns when it comes to title competitiveness.
And it was Pogba’s admission that the team is still, after all this time, struggling to solve their issues that may well alarm United supporters the most.
“To be honest we have been having these kind of games for a long time and we have not found the problem. We have conceded easy and stupid goals,” the midfielder admitted, after United surrendered the game to goals from Jamie Vardy and Patson Daka in the final stages of Saturday’s contest.
“The fans were going to push and put pressure on us and we need to be more mature and arrogant in a good way by playing our football.
“We need to find the key because we deserved to lose. We need to change something. I don’t know if it is the mindset of the players, I don’t know because it is frustrating.
“If we want to win the title these are the games we need to win even if they are very hard. We need to find the mentality and tactics to win.
“It is everyone from the goalkeeper to the last person on the bench. We have to look as individuals and as a team to fix this.”
Where have we heard this before? On numerous occasions over the past three years have players expressed how United’s performances – usually coming after a surprise defeat – aren’t good enough. That’s fine. That’s what happens in football. But rarely do we have an admission of cluelessness when it comes to finding the required solutions.
Signing players – including Jadon Sancho, Cristiano Ronaldo and Raphael Varane this summer – was meant to fix these issues. But the progress United fans were promised just isn’t showing through.
Solskjaer’s appointment was, let us not forget, a temporary one at first. He was a stop-gap between Mourinho’s sacking in December 2018 and the end of that season, where United’s now-outgoing executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward was to make a big appointment.
But when the team fared well under the interim manager and the fans, rightly disappointed with how the Mourinho project panned out, quietened their criticism, the Norwegian was gifted the job full-time.
Appointing Solskjaer certainly dampened short-term expectations at Old Trafford but there was always the promise that soon this project would deliver trophies, particularly the Premier League title.
But this isn’t happening. United have finished third and second in their two full seasons under Solskjaer but on neither occasion did they look capable of sustaining a title challenge. One cup final over this period – admittedly a narrow Europa League defeat to Villarreal on penalties this summer – isn’t much to shout about either.
United fans were promised progress and a plan under Solskjaer, but while the team continually changes the club is simply treading water.
When they sign a defender to alleviate defensive issues, there’s a problem up front. Bring in Ronaldo and Sancho so solve that and suddenly the lack of a holding midfielder exposes the entire team. The wheel of problems just keeps on spinning.
Eventually something is going to have to give. Defeats to Young Boys, West Ham, Aston Villa and now Leicester rightly intensifies the strength of the magnifying glass that Solskjaer is persistently under.
And he’s aware of it.
“Every time you lose, the pressure builds of course, but we are used to living with that pressure,” said the boss on Saturday.
“We are Man Utd. Set-backs have happened before, worse performances, and we’ve got to bounce back on Wednesday (against Atalanta). I’m going to do the job as well as I can; I believe in this team.”
Unfortunately, belief can only get you so far. United have tried to address every department in the squad over the past three years. They’ve sought to buy solutions. But when the players still don’t know how to fix things, questions rightly start being asked about the man in charge.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2Z4oOQ3
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