For the first time since his November 2021 sacking, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has spoken at length about his time in charge of Manchester United. In a wide-ranging interview with Andy Mitten for The Athletic , the former United manager reflected on his legacy at the club, and the possible future Erik ten Hag faces. You can read the conversation here in full.
This piece attempts to analyse some of Solskjaer’s most compelling answers.
On signing Ronaldo
_ “It was a decision that was very difficult to turn down and I felt we had to take it, but it turned out wrong. It felt so right when he signed and the fans felt that at thatNewcastle game, when Old Trafford was rocking (after Ronaldo scored twice in a 4-1 win). He was still one of the best goalscorers in the world, he was looking strong.”_
It is widely understood that the decision to bring Cristiano Ronaldo back to United was one driven by emotion. There is some debate as to whether the decision was powered by Ronaldo potentially moving to Manchester City.
We may never know the depths of Pep Guardiola’s interest in signing the Portuguese, or whether it was a ploy from interested parties to feign interest and alert United that a possible deal could be made. We do know Ronaldo was not in United’s original transfer plans at the start of summer 2021.
Ronaldo made an impact on the pitch upon his return but his wider impact on the team was the subject of consistent debate (Photo: MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)
The forward was a qualified success in his only full season back at Old Trafford, scoring 24 goals across 38 appearances. However. dysfunction across the team led to United finishing sixth in the Premier League, with their worst points total in the competition’s history. Ronaldo looked likely to leave the following summer before staying at United for the first half of the 2022-23 season (where he mostly played Europa League fixtures) before falling out with Ten Hag and moving to Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr in December 2022.
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On Sancho not delivering what was expected
_ “Unfortunately, it has not worked out. When he arrived, he had to go to hospital and that was a setback as he couldn’t start the first games._ _ He’s immensely talented and we haven’t seen the best of him. I hope we do, but he prefers to play left wing… where Marcus [Rashford] plays.”_
After a protracted two-year transfer saga, Jadon Sancho signed for Solskjaer’s United in July 2021. An ear infection meant the young winger could only manage 15 and 30-minute substitute appearances in United’s first two fixtures of the 2021-22 season before making his first start in a bitty 1-0 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers on September 29.
United went into the September international break having announced the signing of Ronaldo, altering the side’s attacking plans for the season. It was after a 5-1 victory over Leeds United in the opening game of the season that Solskjaer said he viewed Edinson Cavani as the only fixed No 9 in the squad, citing the fluid front three of United’s Premier League and Champions League-winning side of 2007-08.
“I remember Wayne (Rooney), Carlos Tevez and Ronaldo playing together. Good players can always play together. And we need movement, and that is what we have today.”
The signing of Ronaldo — along with myriad other factors — changed that dynamic. Sancho only completed 90 minutes once under Solskjaer, with that coming in the final game of the Norweigian’s tenure, against Watford. By the end of the 2021-22 campaign, Sancho had made 38 appearances for United, with 27 occurring on the left wing. In April 2022, The Athletic attempted to explain this shift in Sancho’s play. He lacks the explosive burst of pace necessary to get past Premier League full-backs and is most dangerous when playing in front of a full-back who can offer overlapping runs. At United, Luke Shaw is the best suited to getting the best out of Sancho in the final third. Couple this with a poor season for Marcus Rashford in 2021-22 and Sancho became more of a left-sided option for the club.
A return to form for Rashford under Ten Hag meant he moved ahead of Sancho in the left-winger hierarchy, and the emergence of Alejandro Garnacho has given the Dutchman another pacy attacking threat on the left. To date, 55 of Sancho’s 82 competitive appearances for United have come on the left-hand side, with Ten Hag ending this summer’s pre-season tour experimenting with Sancho as a false nine.
If the situation between Sancho and Ten Hag is ever to be resolved, his most apparent route back into the starting XI is as a right winger. However, he would need one of Aaron Wan-Bissaka or Diogo Dalot to offer more overlapping runs to help him work in the final third — an action neither right-back does in high volume.
On playing football behind closed doors
_ “It’s not easy to go 29 away league games unbeaten._ _ Empty stadiums actually helped us in some ways as we could coach during the matches.“_
You can head here for our deep dive on United’s record-breaking away record under Solskjaer. As the former United manager admits, playing football behind closed doors may have helped feed into the run (which also included a record-equalling amount of comeback results) as it allowed United’s coaching team to give better directives and make in-game adjustments.
“Layer by layer” was a phrase Solskjaer used when describing the team’s progress from 2018-19 to 2020-21; the coaching staff around him appeared to prefer to make iterative developments during the behind-closed-door seasons, rather than dramatic changes.
The nature of football during that period may have helped United for another reason; the Project Restart section of 2019-20 and 2020-21 both had condensed calendars to make space for Euro 2020. With fewer days off between matches and few occasions to train, United had a “work the space” edict to games behind closed doors, aiming to use the ball to exploit pre-existing spaces on the pitch and capitalising on mistakes the opposition team made.
Things would change after the return of fans for 2021-22 and a more typical training schedule for Premier League teams. United found fewer pre-existing spaces to exploit and were missing a special element to help force opposition teams into making mistakes in lucrative areas of the field.
Solskjaer himself recognises the changing nature of things within the interview itself, saying, “Football has changed even since I left as a manager. It’s so different to when I played and we focused on pace, power, personality and individuals who’d win a game. Now, teams are more comfortable playing in their own box, sucking opponents in and exploiting the space they jump from.”
Playing behind closed doors enabled the coaching staff to transmit their ideas more easily, according to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (Photo: Peter Powell – Pool/Getty Images)
On the United captaincy
_ “Some (United players) weren’t as good as their own perception of themselves. I won’t name names, but I was very disappointed when a couple turned down the chance to be captain._ _ I was also disappointed when others said they wouldn’t play or train because they wanted to force their way out.“_
Solskjaer has elected not to name names about who turned down a chance to be United captain, so we will use this opportunity to spotlight Scott McTominay, who did accept the matchday responsibility for an FA Cup tie against Watford in February 2021.
“He didn’t really say much. He just said, ‘Captain tomorrow’, and looked at me,” wrote the midfielder in the match programme for that fixture. “I just smiled, I didn’t want to let off too much emotion but I was so, so pleased.
“For the manager, I presume every decision he makes with me and other players is a test. It’s not just, ‘Oh, I’ll give him the captaincy for no reason’, it’s a test. Everything in life is a test and you have to pass those tests.”
Solskjaer also spends time in his interview defending Harry Maguire, a “strong lad” who “raised our defence big time when he arrived”. The Norwegian opted to make Maguire United’s club captain in January 2020 following the sale of Ashley Young to Inter Milan.
On the dip in form as he went from interim to permanent United manager
_ “Some players wanted to go. Tiredness, since we demanded a lot, and that caused injuries._ _ The air came out of the balloon at the end of that first season but in my two full seasons, we finished third and second in the Premier League.“_
Solskjaer was announced as United’s permanent manager on March 28 2019, but the seeds of 2018-19’s disappointing sixth-place finish were planted a month earlier.
During a 0-0 draw with Liverpool United’s midfield was decimated by injuries to Ander Herrera, Juan Mata and Jesse Lingard. In addition, Nemanja Matic missed the game due to an injury in training the day before. The injuries meant Solskjaer could not use a 4-3-3 shape that was so successful during his early interim period. A midfield trio of Matic as the defensive midfielder, Herrera as a box-to-box shuttler and Paul Pogba in his favoured position on the left of the three had turbocharged United’s climb up the table.
Perhaps concerned by the lack of midfield help, Pogba used the international break after the draw to do something that would become a habit during his final years at United.
“Like I’ve always said, Real Madrid is a dream for anyone, it’s one of the biggest clubs in the world,” said the midfielder before Euro 2020 qualifiers against Moldova and Iceland. “There is also (Zinedine) Zidane as a coach and it’s a dream for anybody who likes football. For now, I’m at Manchester. We don’t know what the future holds. I’m at Manchester and I’m happy.”
Pogba would remain at United until the summer of 2022, but he would say it was a “dream” to play for Real Madrid on more than one occasion while working under Solskjaer. The injuries in the 0-0 draw to Liverpool hurt the squad in more ways than one.
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On the 2021 Europa League final
_ “There’s something missing: a trophy. One penalty could have changed that (in the shootout defeat toVillarreal in the Europa League final) and my time there would be viewed differently. **__Villarreal under Unai Emery were hard to break down. I’ve not watched it back._ _ **But I should have started or at least brought on Nemanja Matic against Villarreal. That game was for him. I didn’t choose him because I felt others deserved it.“_
An ankle injury to Maguire and a minor issue with Fred led to Solskjaer going for an attacking 4-2-3-1 formation, pairing Pogba with McTominay in central midfield. If Fred was fully fit, the Norwegian might have started him next to McTominay and moved Pogba to the left wing, where he had been so successful towards the tail end of that season.
United were undone in Gdansk by the man-marking system employed by Emery, heavily packing the left of the field to stop United’s ball progression, content in the knowledge Wan-Bissaka would not offer attacking support from right-back. Villareal’s compact 4-4-2 shape meant there was little space for Bruno Fernandes around the box to drop into, which led to the Portuguese playmaker moving deeper and deeper to get onto the ball and leaving United light in the final third.
McTominay was a bright spot in the second half of the final before a further tactical tweak from Emery — withdrawing Carlos Bacca in favour of defensive midfielder Francis Coquelin — to close down the available space in central midfield.
Solskjaer — a manager who preferred to wait for his starting line-up to come to the boil rather than make changes before the hour mark — left it until extra time to make his first substitution of the game. By the time the United manager made his first change, Villarreal had already made five.
Matic would be an unused sub throughout.
On United’s recruitment
_ “We couldn’t buy the players I mentioned to the club._ _ Erling Haaland, before he made his Salzburg debut. Declan Rice, who wouldn’t have cost what he did in the summer. We discussed Moises Caicedo, but we felt we needed players ready for there and then. **__Brighton are very good at letting players come from abroad and find their feet for a year and a half. At United, you don’t have that luxury and that has cost the club loads of players.”**_
Solskjaer is diplomatic in saying he mentioned the above players rather than stating he tried to sign them outright. In January 2020, it was reported United were on the verge of a £4.5million ($5.6m) deal to sign Caicedo from Independiente del Valle in Ecuador, only for the move to prove too difficult. The defensive midfielder is now regarded as one of the world’s best, but he would take time to find his feet in Europe. Brighton would loan him for six months of the 2021-22 season to Belgian side Beerschot, where he would make a largely non-descript 14 appearances (totalling 924 minutes) for the team.
A focus on short-term solutions and financial dysfunction meant Solskjaer was unable to get in players who could help United for the future.
Another answer, “I can’t remember every signing I made, but I should because there was a cap on three main ones every season,” is worth highlighting. He does not elaborate on what qualifies as a “main” signing, but those players could be as follows:
2019-2020: Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Bruno Fernandes (in January)
2020-2021: Edinson Cavani, Donny van de Beek, Alex Telles
2021-22: Jadon Sancho, Raphael Varane, Cristiano Ronaldo
Manchester United’s ability to do deals in the summer of 2020 was affected by Covid-19. Still, their activity during that summer window will go down as a missed opportunity to further empower Solskjaer and give him the players to build the squad properly.
(Top photo: Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)
