Positive changes ahead for Man U

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This article was published 21/12/2018 (2806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær will be home for Christmas.

“It feels like coming home, I have to say,” he gushed during his Thursday interview with MUTV, broadcast a day after his appointment as caretaker manager of Manchester United. “It’s been a few whirlwind days, of course. It’s been very hectic, but just great to see everyone again.”

Hired for the remainder of the campaign after José Mourinho was sacked on Tuesday, Solskjær, a former United striker who scored 126 goals for the club over 11 seasons, has been in charge of Norwegian outfit Molde since 2015 and will return to the Aker Stadion in May.

All he has to do in the meantime is restore a sense of pride in representing the club, convince key players to sign new contracts, overhaul the tactics, make a push for Champions League qualification and, most importantly, replace Mourinho’s toxic gloom with a culture of positivity.

“The first thing I felt when I came to United is that it’s a family club,” he said.

Okay, so he’s clearly been away for a while.

What his predecessor left him is an organization in which no one trusts anyone, where players have been publicly criticized and whose manager has ranted at everything from transfer targets to occupied hotel meeting rooms.

On arriving at Carrington to oversee his first training session, Solskjær gave the receptionist a box of Norwegian chocolates. However trivial the gesture, that it was reported so widely and with such delight only underlined the yearning at United for something, anything, resembling human decency.

Shortly thereafter, the 45-year-old sat down in front of the club’s cameras and reminisced about the treble-winning season, legendary boss Sir Alex Ferguson and former teammate Michael Carrick’s debut, of which he remembered every detail, including the weather. Carrick played his first United match during Solskjær’s final season as a player and has remained as part of the coaching staff.

Of course, gifting chocolates and recalling a glorious past won’t add points to the Premier League table, in which the Red Devils sit sixth after making their worst start in nearly 30 years, and Solskjær’s return to Old Trafford has been met with some cynicism, much of it predictable. He won just nine of 30 matches during a brief spell as Cardiff City manager in 2014, and the Elitserien, where he has worked since, isn’t exactly the English top flight.

Was he really handed this caretaker role for no other reason than to make the club feel good about itself, for its fans to be temporarily pacified?

Yes and no.

Clearly, there is something quite intentional about hiring an iconic figure from a period of unprecedented success still recent enough for supporters to remember it. United strayed so quickly and so far from their identity after Ferguson’s retirement that restoring even a piece of it was bound to inspire goodwill, which is something the club has been sorely lacking as of late. And being a chocolate-bearing anti-Mourinho was always guaranteed to be a lift.

But there were also football reasons behind the Solskjær decision, why he and not a Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville or Nicky Butt was offered the job.

Solskjær comes without baggage, and whether from a coaching or commentary standpoint he has been away from the club just long enough to have retained an element of purity. He was the safe choice, but he also offered the promise of an immediate stylistic shift.

Wherever he has coached, his teams have set out to attack. During his spell with United’s youth setup, he won the league with a record number of goals. And his Molde side has found the back of the net with regularity, pressing high up the pitch and using just a single midfielder in a holding role. Paul Pogba, benched by Mourinho in recent matches, will be able to operate as he did with Juventus and does with France, perhaps alongside a playmaker like Juan Mata.

Pogba, incidentally, is one of the players Solskjær will be tasked with persuading to stay at United. Goalkeeper David de Gea and forward Anthony Martial are two others. There will also be relationships to re-forge with Luke Shaw, Alexis Sánchez, Antonio Valencia, Marcos Rojo and Romelu Lukaku. The list goes on.

What Solskjær should have going for him early on is a seemingly straightforward run of matches over the busy holiday period. Following today’s outing at Cardiff (Sportsnet One), United will host Hudderfield and Bournemouth, face Newcastle away and welcome Reading in the FA Cup. The schedule could hardly be more ideal for him to hit the ground running.

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That said, you get the feeling that results, at this point, are of secondary importance to merely boosting the mood at the club. In that, United could have hardly done better than bring back a favourite son.

“It’s great being back home,” Solskjær said.

“I’ll do my very best, along with the staff, to get the players playing and enjoying themselves.”

Manchester United couldn’t wish for a more timely Christmas present.

jerradpeters@gmail.comTwitter @JerradPeters