Graham Ruthven reflects on Manchester United's crushing defeat to Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Ed Woodward surely took his seat at Old Trafford for Manchester United’s Premier League clash against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday with a sense of self satisfaction. The past 24 hours had, by all accounts, seen the United chief close a deal for Edinson Cavani, with news breaking of an agreement with Porto for Alex Telles breaking just before kick off. Woodward, however, was presented with an illustration of how it will take more than a couple panic signings to set the club on the right path again.
Manchester United finished last season strongly, stringing together a 14-game unbeaten Premier League run to finish third. There was a spirit of optimism around the club as they secured Champions League qualification with a final day victory over Leicester City. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer immediately spoke of the need to strengthen. Of the need to use that third place finish as a platform.
Three games into the new Premier League season, though, and it appears United have wasted the opportunity they gave themselves. A summer of transfer market inaction, while others around them strengthened, saw malaise take hold at Old Trafford. This was a factor in the opening day defeat to Crystal Palace and it was a factor as Tottenham Hotspur inflicted yet more humiliation on United on Sunday.
It was not the only factor, though. While Manchester United’s scattergun recruitment over a number of years has resulted in an unbalanced, top-heavy squad, Solskjaer’s deficiencies as a coach have been exposed over the first few weeks of the season. The team he has is much better than they have shown in games against Palace, Spurs and even Brighton, a match United won only by virtue of the Amex Stadium woodwork.
More than once, Solskjaer has applied pressure on the United board to deliver him the signings he feels he needs. Prior to Sunday’s defeat to Spurs, the Norwegian implied he’d been left to clean up the mess left by his predecessors, highlighting poor recruitment decisions made. The problem with Solskjaer highlighting a lack of strategy, though, is it was this lack of strategy that led to his appointment in the first place.
Solskjaer deserves some credit for what he has achieved in nearly two years in charge. The Norwegian has restored a sense of identity, at least in terms of the attacking football United now like to play. He has promoted youth prospects like Mason Greenwood and Brandon Williams, restored Anthony Martial as a goalscoring force and got more out of expensive signings like Fred and Paul Pogba. The culture at the club is better now than it was when Solskjaer came in.
The dismal start to the 2020/21 campaign has prompted many to question whether Solskjaer is good enough as a coach to take United any further. The Norwegian may well have given the club a platform, but it might take someone else to build on that. Woodward will surely ponder, not for the first time, what Mauricio Pochetto would do with this group of players.
Pochettino still might not take Manchester United where they want to go. This is a club without the appropriate sporting structure to succeed at the elite level. As Monchi, the transfer market guru behind Sevilla’s success over the last decade, expressed in an interview given last week, it’s remarkable United are still without a Director of Football to calibrate the sporting side of the club. David Moyes, Louis Van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Solskjaer have all suffered similar problems at United. Why would Pochettino’s experience be any different?
The challenge for this season was to close the gap on Liverpool and Manchester City at the top of the English game, but Manchester United now seem more likely to be caught by the likes of Everton and Leicester City, both of whom have started the campaign well. There are a number of reasons for this and Sunday’s match saw many of them unfold over 90 catastrophic minutes.