Man United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer might have made a key mistake in his team selection against Leicester City this past weekend, that’s according to Paul Merson.
United went on to lose this match 3-1 as Solskjaer chose to rest a lot of his first-team regulars and Merson believes that putting someone like Bruno Fernandes on the bench was a real tactical blunder from the manager. And this has now put immense pressure on the players to deliver a silverware and they have only the Europa League to fight for.
“When you rotate, you have to get the balance right,” Merson wrote in his Sky Sports column. “When you rotate and you win, it’s great but when you rotate and you don’t win, that’s when the problems start. Thomas Tuchel has probably rotated just as much as Frank Lampard did but because Frank never got the results, people said he rotated too much. But because Thomas Tuchel is getting the results, no one mentions it.
“The one player Manchester United have to play is [Bruno] Fernandes. He’s played every single week in virtually every game, then it gets to the quarter-final of the FA Cup and he doesn’t play.
“He’s played in other games where the game is sort of a dead rubber where they’ve won the first leg and he’s played. I thought it was strange and a bad result for Man Utd. Shocking.
“People keep laughing because I keep saying it but Manchester United are the biggest club in world football, in my opinion. But they need to win something. It’s alright going and beating Man City and stopping the run, but you’ve got to kick on and go and win a trophy. Now the pressure is on – they’ve got the Europa and that’s it.
“I don’t know what they’re thinking upstairs at United. I don’t know if they’re thinking ‘just get us top four, Champions League football and we’ll go from there’. They’re going to get Champions League football, I don’t see them finishing outside the top four so for Ole not to keep his job when teams like Liverpool, Chelsea or Arsenal might not finish in the top four – it’s not as easy as it used to be to walk into the top four every year.
View this post on Instagram
“It depends how the owners perceive it and what they want. If it’s going to keep ticking over the books for them, getting into the top four, it’s a job well done. For me, it’s Manchester United and they need to be winning trophies. But if they win the Europa League and get in the top four, which I expect them to, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Solskjaer has come under heavy criticism after Man United were knocked out of the FA Cup last weekend and there have been reports that the owners will sack him if he fails to win the Europa League. While these rumours might not be true but there’s no denying that Ole is also eager to land a major trophy as soon as possible.
The FA Cup was the perfect opportunity to end the trophy drought but the manager’s risk of making changes clearly did not pay off. And by the time players like Bruno Fernandes and Luke Shaw were brought on, it was too late.
