Roll up, roll up for the dead-men-walking derby. Listen to see whether the home or away end groans first and whose boos last longest. Find out if Harry Kane can touch the ball in the opposition penalty area or if Cristiano Ronaldo will complete his hat-trick of storming down the tunnel. Prepare your montages of a manager stroking his chin, staring off into the middle distance in vague hope of a miracle. Failing that, a dose of competence will do.
By rights, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Nuno Espirito Santo should occupy different planes in the “managers under pressure” sphere. The former has been in his job for almost three years and had little high-level experience beforehand, the other not yet three months having managed with some success in Spain, Portugal and the Premier League. And yet here they stand, in front of supporters who are quickly beginning to conclude they are the wrong men at the wrong time for their jobs.
To an extent, this is all about chaos. At Old Trafford, there is far too much. On Sunday against Liverpool they played like a team of children, all magnetised towards the ball at once and thus leaving gaping spaces across the pitch that Liverpool’s attackers took barely a few minutes to spot and then exposed repeatedly. United have scored four and five and conceded four and five in the league this season. In Europe, they led against Young Boys but lost and trailed against Villarreal and Atalanta but won. Extreme wealth is supposed to guarantee predictability. Solskjaer has decimated that notion.
For Nuno, the problem is that Tottenham aren’t chaotic enough. Seven of their 16 matches this season in all competitions have ended in 1-0 defeat or victory. Against West Ham, they hardly played poorly and they were never shambolic. Instead they were just… there. Tottenham’s matches turn on one or two incidents for better or worse, no matter the standard of the opposition. Supporters are finding reasons not to watch.
Despite the vast gap in the aesthetic experience, the root cause is pretty similar. Both Manchester United and Tottenham are suffering from a chronic lack of cohesion between individual players, partnerships and different sections of the team.
For Nuno, the struggle has been servicing an excellent front four and stopping the approach play from getting sluggish. For Solskjaer, it’s working out how to create chances without over-committing players forward and leaving the midfield exposed. He has a cavalcade of attacking options but that’s no use if you can’t protect the defence. Those issues are exacerbated by a lack of communication between defenders – see Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw for Liverpool’s second goal.
The mood at each club is slightly different because the clubs themselves have different expectations and standards. Apathy is becoming Tottenham’s disease. It is based in the resigned belief that their best chance to win major trophies has now passed and so the least they could do is try and enjoy themselves. That presents Nuno, a defensively-minded manager, as a misguided appointment. But then he was fourth choice at best.
There will never be apathy at Old Trafford. Manchester United are not too big to fail but they are too rich, too famous and with too big a global fanbase to simply slip quietly into the shadows. The mania surrounding Solskjaer’s position reflects that, and it doesn’t feel inappropriate. Quite the opposite: United are in their longest trophyless streak in over 30 years and yet nobody within the club’s hierarchy appears to be suitably perturbed.
Solskjaer appears closer to losing his job than Nuno after a series of leaks ended with the assumption that he has three games to save himself. But then even that is a cop out from those above him. If United beat Spurs and Atalanta and, say, draw with Manchester City, has anything really changed? Would that really establish Solskjaer as the best man to make United a serious title challenger or erase the damage of a 5-0 home defeat to Liverpool? And, more pertinently, what is Solskjaer now going to magically implement that he has not already thought of over the last three years?
But then that’s entirely the point here. The strongest defence of Solskjaer is the strongest defence of Nuno: they are not the biggest problems at their clubs. Their mere presence – and their struggles – are symbolic of the cracks above them. Tottenham’s inability to persuade their primary targets to sign suggests that they are a club fighting against a tide of approaching mediocrity. Manchester United’s retention of Solskjaer over other high-profile coaches (some of whom have now taken other jobs) was an acceptance of that mediocrity.
And so the sorry conclusion for both managers is exactly the same. It is not intended to be damning, although it might sound a little too harsh and sting a little too much. But the more you cogitate over it, the more transparent it appears: neither of them would be here if their clubs had managed things a little more sensibly.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3mnKfUY
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