David de Gea is said to have turned down a move to Saudi-Arabia and Al-Nassr. A payment of £500.000 a week is said to be the deal. De Gea can join Inter Miami and have a standing offer from the MLS club, we will see what the goalkeeper, leaving Man Utd in the summer, will do.
Harvey Barnes and Anthony Gordon are both considering their options on the international arena, being overlooked by England, could se them both taking a final decision on playing for Scotland.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is still a caretaker manager, and as a few predicted after the PSG game, he was to become the manager of the club on permanent basis signing a contract during the international break.
But after the loss against Arsenal in the Premier League and Wolves in the FA Cup, the “vulture culture” might be back in the walls at Old Trafford. To see a team losing, massive problems with injuries and fatigue is not what the “dreamers” at the top were asking Mr. Solskjaer.
As we all do, forget the bad days and counts the best, based on results and trophies you decide or media makes a decision for you, describing a manager as a legend, a success or a failure, and when being judged you are going to court on a very unfair judgement.
David Moyes never got a chance, stamped useless during the summer when the only player he got in was Marouane Fellaini, who had a difficult situation never really accepted by the fans of Manchester United.
Lous Van Gaal was the next man in, he never really fitted the style of the club, despite bringing in some very interesting players, qualified for Champions League football and even won the FA Cup, almost a trophy the fans and staff at Manchester United throw in the dust bin.
Jose Mourinho came in and is by far, according to stats, the best manager at the club ever if you count the days he was in charge and the average of trophies, finals and Champions League qualifications that he managed, facts are that he is much better than both Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Matt Busby, and he was also thrown out.
if you take the years in charge, divide it on the number of trophies, finals and qualification for Europe, Jose is by far much better than these two legends and you start to wonder what type of atmosphere it could have been.
Players signed by Jose Mourinho get confused when asked questions from media about all that have changed suddenly. The only thing that changed really was the fixture list, and as we could see facts clear, Juventus was beaten away in the same way as Arsenal and PSG was.
Paul Pogba, on international break, starts his flirt with Real Madrid, and would love to work with Zinedine Zidane. Pogba have no desire what so ever to stay at Man Utd, his wish to play somewhere else, is much deeper than being under the wings of Jose Mourinho or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Paul Pogba won the World Cup with France surrounded by a number of players that made it possible for him to shine and play to his best by being kept in the balance and in able to use his best abilities, as we have seen in Man Utd lately he is not as good as he was against the weaker teams, since his contribution is best when having the ball and not just counter attacking and defend.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a popular choice for fans and he certainly got the smiles back on their faces, but a day will come when the right moves in the transfer market should be done and as we have seen before Soskjaer will only give “green lights” and probably not be the one eying the players to come in for next season.
So if Solskjaer is not given the job this week, he will certainly be surprised to see the job going to him permanent going into the summer without not being the one pinpointing the changes and be ready for pre-season without a stop and start decision making.
To see all the last summers transfer targets of Jose Mourinho again turning up in the rumor mill is a bit surprising, and that shows that this is a much more complicated picture of a club with a hierarchy not really easy to understand.
We wish Ole Gunnar Solskjaer the best for the rest of the season and hopefully the owners and the CEO can understand that Manchester United’s problems never will be solved by just sacking managers, that is just a fun fact and often what people above in the system are doing when they are trying to solve their problems and save their own asses.
The Manchester United problem has to do with evilness in a combination of fans just forgetting that football is not just win, win and win. Fans are full of expectations that are really not able to go through and owners acts as ducks since they have no good sporting plan long term, realistically being build on a foundation of reality and taking care of the legacy left behind by Sir Alex Ferguson.
Former players such as Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Paul Scholes are constantly in the media talking about the club, what they should do, this and that, and should really not be talking in public about the present at the club and just stand tall and talk about their own business and not feel tempted to talk down great men as they have done in the past with especially Jose Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal. They are truly also colleagues and should pay full respect and not let media fuzz them around.
Lately Zlatan Ibrahimovic commented on this and we totally agree on this as it will not do anything good at all to talk in the terms that those previous players have done. The problem for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is that he is “too nice” and when hit with the “talk of Pogba” the fact that he in the future must deal with criticism that he probably thought he would never get and that the “vultures” thinking he is not “big enough” will fast start circulating if the results goes against Manchester United.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is a lost soul and a tool in all this and for him it can go either way, but so far he has done a great job, but if the appointment is put on hold then we now the answer. The executives are not in any way working as they should, but hopefully they will be able to keep their team floating because of the money available to stop fires of getting out of hand.