FIVE ASIDES Premier League: United 0, City 2
That wasn’t a derby. It was a minor surgical procedure. United played the first half as if they were under anaesthetic. To lose one goal to a defender’s blunder may be considered a misfortune; to lose two – in three league games out of four – looks like carelessness. On the part of the management.
A week has passed since, and nothing has happened. A week is a long time in football – long enough for Steven Gerrard to be poached by Aston Villa, for Daniel Farke to get the boot from Norwich, even for Harry Kane to find some form in front of goal. Meanwhile, at United, time is standing still, and so is the team. The manager has been on holiday; the owner has been in Florida; the chief executive is there but not there. The club is in limbo.
Solskjaer should fall on his sword. That was our feeling after Liverpool, and it still is. In the form table, covering the past six games for each club, United are 18th, with four points, above only Newcastle and Villa. There’s no disgrace in losing 2-0 to City, but there is some disgrace in not ditching the back five till half-time: with City, as usual, fielding a false nine or two, United had three players marking nobody, so they were outnumbered everywhere else. It was blindingly obvious beforehand that, with Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish out of sorts, the big threat was Joao Cancelo at left-back, yet United left him to his own devices for the whole of the first half and sure enough, he created both goals. The team Solskjaer built are just too easy for the best players to play against.
It’s possible that they will find their form as suddenly as they lost it. (After the first five games, they were unbeaten on 13 points, just like Chelsea and Liverpool.) That has been the pattern of the Solskjaer years: feast, then famine, then feast again, then famine again. United could yet scrape fourth place this season, but only if they get some help from their rivals. West Ham will have to fade, Arsenal will have to slip back into their summer form, Spurs will have to get along badly with Antonio Conte. As things stand, United are heading for seventh, just like in 2013-14 – under David Moyes, who is now doing better, with less talent, than Solskjaer.
There’s another, broader pattern to the Solskjaer era: not winning things. Not coming close to winning the league. Not winning cup semi-finals – or winning one, and then freezing in the final. Solskjaer runs a happier ship than Jose Mourinho did, but a less successful one. Under almost any other owner, his time would be up. He needs to see that himself and do something about it. Sticking around now isn’t putting the club first.