Red Alert With Steve Shanyaski

Well, that’s United out of the Champions League again. After all the effort to finish third last season after the COVID restart, getting us a slot in the group stages of the Champions League, we turned up to Leipzig last night and absolute stank to high heaven.

We needed one point from either of the last two games. Just a draw against PSG or RBL would’ve been enough. Instead, Fred headbutted a PSG player but receives only a yellow card and Ole thinks it’s a great idea to keep him on after the ref would clearly watch the footage back during half time. Fred picks up the inevitable second yellow, down to 10 men and no chance of even drawing against last year’s finalists. A naïve error by Ole. Then we just needed to draw against Leipzig, who we beat 5-0 on our previous encounter.

Ole starts tactically against Leipzig with a defensive back five, and two defensive midfielders. A cowardly seven at the back, inviting the opposition to “come on” against our parked bus. They scored within the first two minutes against a defence that looked like they’d never played that formation ever in their lives. I think Wan Bissaka was marking Maguire for the first goal. We were absolutely shocking last night. You only had to put in a cross that went over the heads of Maguire and Lindelof and their winger would be clear on goal. The first two goals were like this, in the first 13 minutes, and Ole still didn’t change formation and tactics. By the end of the first half, Leipzig had a third goal disallowed and a player missed a clear chance on goal. They could’ve been 4-0 up by the end of the first half. You and I would’ve pondered our tactical errors after the first goal, and without question changed our tactics after the second. Not Ole. He stuck with it until we should’ve been 4-0 down at half time.

Solskjaer is so out of his depth with this role, it’s painful to see the sheepish look in his eyes after every weekly howling defensive error. Bearing in mind his error in keeping on Fred during the PSG game, going 2-0 down against Southampton at the weekend before we turned the game around, losing 2-1 to Istanbul with some even more humiliating defensive errors, his cowardly defensive starting line-ups against even the worst teams like West Brom that we barely beat 1-0, picking favourites over in-form players like the Van de Beek saga; baring all that in mind, under this manager, the Europa League is our rightful place.

Ole Gunner Solskjaer is showing now, game after game, that he is too inexperienced to handle a team that could be doing so much better. He even played Pogba last night after his agent was allowed to say on behalf of his player that he is, “unhappy at Manchester United… the best solution is that he goes in the next transfer window”. Psychologically, that just looks like Pogba can do and say as he pleases. It was upsetting to the fans just before two of our biggest games this season to hear that Pogba doesn’t want to be at United. Perhaps we aren’t happy that he has never turned up for United since the day he was signed.

I wrote in last week’s column that Pogba is in a great position to work hard and prove his place in the squad, he just needed to put the effort into this crisis to turn himself around. Instead, almost instantly, his agent is saying to the footballing world that he wants to leave. A much easier option, I guess. Bizarrely, for the 29 minutes he was on the pitch, Pogba was like a man possessed and fired up to work extremely hard to win the game. We face City this weekend in the derby, and I said to Ian Cheeseman on his radio show that if United start with two CDM’s we are in big trouble. That was before we lost painfully last night. Knowing United and Ole’s bullet-dodging ability though, we will hopefully win against City and we’ll all remain completely confused about Solsjkaer tactical ability for another week, as long as we don’t play like last night.