Ole Gunner Solskjaer’s Manchester United career is hanging by the thinnest, flimsiest of threads.

There have been times during his tenure at Old Trafford when it has looked like he might be on to something, that the club might be about to spring back to life.

But, like trying to start an old car on a snowy morning, those signs have not actually been followed by anything actually happening. It has been a long series of false starts, backfires and angry fist clenching.

The simple fact is that Manchester United are going nowhere under his stewardship. They don’t have an identity, they don’t have a coherent plan, they don’t have a style and they don’t have a lot of hope.

For a club of this stature to only have seven points, six games into the season, is borderline catastrophic. When you back that up with defeat in the Champions League to minnows Istanbul Basaksehir that was described as ‘comical’ and ‘embarrassing’ by the pundits, the picture becomes bleaker.

And don’t give me that old, tired nonsense about the squad not being good enough. There is more than enough quality in the players at Ole’s disposal to be challenging at the very top of the table, not looking over their shoulder at the bottom. This is, in my opinion, a better squad than the one Alex Ferguson had when he last won the league.

It must surely now only be a matter of time, maybe one or two more poor performances or another embarrassing defeat, before the United hierarchy decide enough is enough.

I would bet my bottom dollar, if I hadn’t just wagered it on Trump winning a second term, on the very available Mauricio Pochettino being Manchester United manager at some point before the end of the season.

If that is going to happen, and I can’t see it not happening, then surely it makes more sense to make the move sooner rather than later. Give the club the chance to make something out of the season.

Ole’s had plenty of time to get things right, but there is little or no evidence that will ever happen. As a player he was great, but as a manager he is out of his depth.

It’s time for a change.

A BLM conundrum

When Premier League footballers started ‘taking the knee’ before games in a show of support for the Black Lives Matter campaign, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

However, as time has gone by and the players keep kneeling, it is starting to feel a little tired. Just as with anything we see repeated over and over again, people are becoming a bit oblivious and numb to it.

It makes more sense to make the move sooner rather than later. Give the club the chance to make something out of the season

And on that basis I think it’s time to bring it to an end. Not because black lives matter less now than they did six months ago, but because the point has been made and it is losing its meaning.

The question is, how does the Premier League get out of it? You can rest assured that if and when they decide to call time on the gesture there will be an outcry from a select few who think they are being disrespectful.

And, despite that not being true, those few voices will be extra vocal.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that the Premier League has got itself in a bit of a pickle with this gesture by not setting a time limit from the word go.

It will be interesting to see what happens when they do decide it’s time to move on. I suspect it won’t be pretty, and they may need to find another way to show their support to avoid the backlash.

One game, nine points

Not a bad midweek for Sheffield Wednesday, considering how their season has been going so far.

The Hillsborough club started their campaign in the Championship on -12 points for breaching the league’s financial regulations. Starting four wins away from the bottom obviously had a demoralising effect on the team and they lost five of their opening 10 games.

But things started looking up last Tuesday night when they beat Bournemouth 1-0, and then their week got a whole lot better on Wednesday when the league halved their point deduction to six.

Effectively the club gained nine points in the space of 24 hours despite only playing one game.

I think we may just have witnessed a pub quiz question being born.

Your say

Last time I dared to question Lewis Hamilton’s supremacy as the greatest driver of all time, I got a few e-mails questioning my sanity. This time I got one that makes plenty of sense:

“You have recently been praising Lewis Hamilton’s dominance but also wondering whether he is the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time, so I think this is going to interest you.

“Andrew Bell of the University of Sheffield has built a model for The Economist that compares Formula 1 drivers’ performances over the years. It is difficult, of course, to come up with a model that spans decades, different rules in the sport, different scoring systems, etc., but it seems to have been done rather well.

“Trying to put all these nuances into the model, it then awards points to each of the 745 drivers that have ever participated in an F1 race. It splits the points into those won by the driver’s ability and those won thanks to being in a superior car. 

“Two examples: 1. When Schumacher was racing, Ferrari, McLaren and Williams were considered to have cars of similar quality so Schumacher’s wins over his opponents can be attributed to him personally.

“2. Bottas had never won a race before joining Mercedes. Now, he has nine wins to his name, because Mercedes’s cars are currently greatly superior to all others on the track.

“Obviously, the more races a driver wins with different models of cars, different teams, under different rules and, to put it bluntly, with crappy cars, the more the win can be attributed to the driver’s prowess rather than the car’s design.

“Thus, the model awards the GOAT status to Juan Manuel Fangio (1950-1958). Second place goes to Jim Clark (1960-1968) and third comes Alain Prost (1980-1993). Schumacher comes a distant fifth, Hamilton sixth and Senna, eighth.

“The conclusion of the study is that the real GOATs of today are engineers and IT specialists, not the men who sit behind the wheel. A relatively poor driver driving such an incredible machine as Hamilton is would probably do rather well too.

“Poor Lando Norris tried to point this out in some comments he made but was forced to apologise by the usual social media mobs who felt he was ‘disrespecting Lewis Hamilton’s achievements’.

“It must also be noted that Fangia was also a mechanic, so he was probably knocking those cars into shape off the track as well as winning races with them on it.” Patrick Zammit, e-mail.

james@findit.com.mt
Twitter: @maltablade