I doubt you’ll find a single person wandering the Old Trafford corridors of power who will admit it, but I have a hunch today’s game between Manchester United and Liverpool will decide the long-term future of Ole Gunnar Solskjær.
The rumblings of discontent with the Norwegian are getting louder by the day. United-supporting friends of mine who were previously very much within the ‘give him time’ camp are gradually moving over to the ‘it’s not going to work’ group.
I have long said the former striker doesn’t have the experience, skills or personality for such a huge job. He may be a lovely chap, but when you are dealing with global superstars and a club with the immense expectations of United, niceness is not necessarily what’s needed.
The former striker doesn’t have the experience, skills or personality for such a huge job
Despite having one of the strongest squads in their recent history, results have not been great. Drawing with Everton, losing to Aston Villa and Leicester City – those are not the sort of results that show a team is going in the right direction.
As has often been the case, Ole pulled off a result when he needed it most, with the thrilling comeback against Atalanta in midweek. But although they won thanks to another piece of Cristiano Ronaldo magic, that can’t deflect from the abject first half performance. They could have been five down by half time.
And that is how things are going under Ole, erratic performances that show no sign of finding any sort of consistency. It’s been the same since he took charge, and that tells me that he is the root cause, not the players.
Let’s not forget, most of United’s positive results this season have come on the back of Ronaldo magic. Take him out of the equation and any potential trophy challenge would already be unthinkable.
But up until a few weeks ago nobody even knew CR would be returning to Old Trafford. So you can’t exactly say Ole picked him out as the missing link he needed to complete his team. It was pure luck.
This afternoon, United face a Liverpool team that are in some decent form, scoring 15 goals in their last four games. It would be a tough task for any team to try and stop that sort of scoring machine, especially with Mo Salah hitting his peak.
For United I feel this will be a season-defining game, while for Ole it is likely to be job-defining. Win and he can just about claim things are moving in the right direction; lose and it will be further evidence that despite a couple of years in the job and a spend running into hundreds of millions, United are no closer to the top than they were when he started.
I won’t even begin to suggest he will be fired if they lose. But the nagging doubts that have started to creep in among United fan base will spread like wildfire. Once that sort of rot sets in, there is unlikely to be any going back.
And I think it will only be a matter of time before United come to terms with the reality that they don’t, despite their hopes, have a new Alex Ferguson on their hands and that no amount of time will turn him into one.
Football’s share of covidiots
I find it hard to believe that only two-thirds of players in the Premier League are fully vaccinated against COVID. I mean, what exactly are the rest waiting for?
These guys should be leading the way and setting an example for everybody else. They should have been first in line to get jabbed the moment they were able to do so.
What makes this appallingly low rate even more bizarre is that surely these footballers need to be double vaccinated in order to travel overseas for games? How is that working exactly?
And considering the fact that footballers, by the very nature of their sport, are almost constantly coming into contact with people outside their immediate bubble, aren’t they aware of how easily they could catch the virus and spread it to others?
If I were running the Premier League, I would make vaccination compulsory without any further ado. Unless a player has a legitimate medical reason not to take the jab then they shouldn’t be allowed on the pitch until they do so.
Celebrity sportsmen, idolised by millions of impressionable youngsters, should be going out of their way to persuade the masses to get injected – not reluctantly hiding away at the back of the queue.
The end for Mr Bruce?
I think it’s safe to say that Steve Bruce wasn’t overly-shocked when he was relieved of his managerial duties by Newcastle United last week.
With ultra-rich new owners around the boardroom table, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the ex-Manchester United player was shown the door.
After all, how could a down-to-earth, working-class type of manager like Bruce ever fit in with the club’s glamourous and ambitious plans to become a European football powerhouse?
Despite the fact that Bruce will walk away from the job with a multimillion-pound compensation package, it’s still hard not to feel a little bit sorry for him.
This was, after all, his dream job. A Newcastle fan from birth, he had always wanted to take charge of his home town club. That’s why he didn’t think twice about walking out on Sheffield Wednesday after just a few months to make the journey to St James’s Park.
The problem for Bruce was that the fans simply didn’t want him. They saw him as a considerable step down from the comparative sexiness of Rafa Benitez.
And Bruce’s situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the then owner – Mike Ashley – had all but lost interest in the club and was not exactly doing everything in his power to help the team move forward.
But it was Bruce’s relationship with the fans that will have left a very sour taste in his mouth. In fact, in his farewell statement he didn’t bother to thank the fans, which is highly unusual for any manager leaving a club, especially so when it is a club for which they have huge amounts of affection.
And in an interview following his departure, Bruce indicated the experience was so terrible he probably won’t return to football.
“I think this might be my last job... it has been very, very tough. To never really be wanted, to read people constantly saying I would fail, that I was useless, a fat waste of space, a stupid, tactically inept cabbage-head,” he said.
Very harsh, especially considering against the odds Bruce led Newcastle to 12th and 13th place finishes, which is decent considering the resources at his disposal.
But moving forward, Bruce will be nothing more than a footnote in the Newcastle United history books. Not the legacy he would have wanted, but from day one this has always felt like a tale that would end in tears – for the manager if not the fans he leaves behind.
Twitter: @maltablade