Solskjær’s Manchester United are meeting expectations despite unrest

The protest songs began around the hour mark, shortly after Burnley had scored their second goal: swelling and swirling around the tired, peeling old ground like hymns to a hazily-remembered past. One was about wanting their United back. Another proposed chopping Ed Woodward up from head to toe: the same grisly verse that had greeted the Glazer family when they first rolled into Old Trafford in the summer of 2005. Another beseeched fans to stand up if they hated the Glazers. Thousands of fans got to their feet. To be fair, they might simply have been heading for the exits.

For his part, Ole Gunnar Solskjær is very much a ground-half-full rather than a ground-half-empty kind of guy. After being pasted by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup semi-final, he took heart from the fact City had put out their strongest team. After being outclassed by Liverpool, he paid tribute to the fact they had been “in the game until the last kick”. And again, despite going down 2-0 to Burnley at Old Trafford amid an unprecedented fan exodus and the worst start to a league season for 30 years, the Manchester United manager was keen to look on the bright side.

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“We are in all competitions,” Solskjær said. “We are still in the Carabao Cup, FA Cup, fifth in the league, improved from last season. We’ve got the Europa League.” Through Solskjær’s prism of unshakeable optimism, even the greatest ignominies can be viewed in a positive hue. Yes, thousands left before the end, but at least they bought their tickets in the first place. Yes, United lost 2-0, but they managed to hold Burnley at bay for all of 39 minutes. And that unstoppable second goal: what a glowing tribute by Jay Rodriguez, deliberately firing the ball into the very top corner as a show of respect to David de Gea. That’s the class of United.

In many ways, this is all Solskjær has left to offer: empty bromides, a toothpaste-rich smile, vague and forlorn promises that things will be better one day, somehow. If David Moyes was an appeal to United’s past and José Mourinho a pragmatic recognition of their present, then Solskjær is Future Boy, the guy who shows you a long-term global CO₂ emissions graph and cheerily points out that it might be shorts weather tomorrow.

For now, fifth place feels about right for United. Certainly there is little in the underlying data to indicate otherwise: expected goals suggest their defence are second best in the league rather than sixth, but this could just as easily be interpreted as a signal of De Gea’s long-term decline. Meanwhile, the only major metrics in which United lead the pack are number of penalties, shots from long range and proportion of goals conceded from set pieces. All of which tallies with the visual evidence of the Solskjær era: a team low on organisation, low on process and high on life, as addicted as ever to the doctrine of caprice and inspiration, of quick fixes, magic moments and instant heroes.

Should any of this really surprise us? There was a sly stat doing the rounds on Wednesday to the effect that Solskjær has lost more games than he has won since being appointed permanent manager. Include his spectacular start as caretaker, however, and a more balanced picture emerges: an average of 1.64 points per game, a shade under Moyes (1.68), a little way behind Louis van Gaal (1.79) and Mourinho (1.89). As it happens, this tallies pretty closely with how most people would rate their relative coaching abilities.

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This, in many ways, is the point. Nobody has gone rogue here. Nobody has wildly violated expectations. Nobody has performed any differently to how they should have been anticipated to perform. We knew Harry Maguire is a promising but mistake-prone centre-half, that Paul Pogba delivers in raw numbers but needs a double pivot behind him, that Eric Bailly is gifted but injury prone. We knew, or should have done, that Solskjær is a fine ambassador but wildly inexperienced at running a club of United’s size, which should have been a factor when he was handed the permanent job with needless haste on the basis of a VAR decision against Paris Saint-Germain.

We knew all about Ed Woodward, too: an executive with a gift for striking commercial deals based on the club’s historical brand value, a value he is merrily melting to the ground. And United fans can hardly plead ignorance of the Glazer playbook, which rolled into town 15 years ago bringing with it a callous, cynical fixation on the bottom line and nine-figure payment-in-kind loans. As long as times were good, the majority stayed silent: obediently renewing their season tickets, dutifully buying their replica shirts every season, continuing to funnel their own money into a declining product.

The problem is that these strands are not easily separated. There is a certain irony in that Solskjær, when he was a player, was one of the most vocal opponents of the Glazer takeover, patron of the Shareholders United fan group and even idly mooted as a potential manager for any breakaway club.

These days, of course, he is a company man to the hilt: handcuffed to a job and an opportunity he must know will come once and never again. The players are well recompensed, and for all the talk of another rebuild, clearing out the decks will be easier said than done.

Meanwhile, cutting Solskjær loose would reflect horribly on Woodward, the man who appointed him. And giving in to popular unrest and sidelining Woodward would hardly be the shrewdest move on the part of the Glazers, for whom he is both a money-spinner and a handy lightning rod for criticism.

In short, they’re all stuck with each other, for now at least. Like the captured crew of a gently listing prison hulk: Ole’s at the wheel but if he’s honest he doesn’t really understand how the controls work, but then nor does anyone else, and in any case nobody’s going anywhere in a hurry (the most inept era in the club’s modern history has seen them fall a grand total of four places in seven years).

Away they sail, then: hands tethered, fates entwined, drifting harmlessly into the high seas.