Colin Sheridan: In many ways, birth as a gaffer was the death of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

Since Ole Gunnar Solskjær took over at Old Trafford, there has been almost an expectant air that his demise would soon become him. His ship may have just struck ice but his difficult week may inspire a plucky run that will prolong everyone’s agony, says Colin Sheridan. Picture: Getty Images

There are two ways to approach this. Both conclude — I believe — in the same place. The first is practised by those who can, writers and journalists with the abilities and bandwidth to deep-dive the bejaysus out of something. To meet petrified sources on damp Manchester street corners and turn the information they get into tangible intelligence. These guys will embed themselves with a team as if a hack joining an infantry platoon in the Muong Hoa Valley during the Vietnam war. They will pour over xG equations and study market trends. They will adopt radical methods such as actually going to football matches and asking questions at press conferences. From these experiences, they write great stories about why Manchester United should stick or twist when it comes to their manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Their opinions are immaculately researched and reasoned and they should be listened to. Thank God for these people. They genuinely make our lives better.

There is a second way. Let’s call it ‘My Way’. This method requires no deep dives and no embedding. It mostly consists of the intermittent and broken consumption of podcasts and long-read articles related to the subject in question. Eavesdropping in coffee shops and speakeasies. A vague idea of recent results and league tables. A polyamorous relationship with Match of the Day. Little or no knowledge of what Alex Telles looks like, or that the player McFred is in fact two people, not one. Mine is the method of the everyman eye test, practised by a mind completely unencumbered by knowledge. The mile-wide-inch-deep luke-warm hot-take that can only come from somebody who hasn’t been paying much attention, but for whom the truth is plainly obvious. Yes, I have watched United twice in 12 months and I am absolutely convinced I know what is going on. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer should not be the manager of a Sainsbury’s in the city, let alone a football club. He looks like a guy who won some sort of competition. Like Eddie Murphy in the movie Trading Places. Maybe he knows a secret about Alex Ferguson, or he is related to Ed Woodward. Whatever it is, it makes no sense whatsoever. This is Ted Lasso levels of subversion.

This may sound harsh. This may in fact be harsh. Who am I to call for another man to lose his job, but, the knowledge that he would be well compensated financially softens the blow, and the fact his players will fete him on social media once his desk is cleared. “SORRY WE COULDN’T DO IT FOR YOU BOSS!” will be the disingenuous battle-cry from his squad who will forget him quicker than a Martial miss. The dinner ladies and boot boys will, however, genuinely miss him, because of course he seems like a good bloke.

Yes, there will be much soul searching and contrition, all of it as shallow as a puddle. A few years from now, when he returns with Darlington in the third round of the FA Cup, the Stretford End will stand and applaud him.

His legacy as a club legend will be unharmed by this stuttering stint, so long as it comes to an end sometime over the next eight months. His loyalists now resemble those among the Republican party in the US who decried Covid-19 as a hoax while secretly being the first to be vaccinated.

Those people are J Bruce Ismay-ing the shit out of this and pushing the women and children off the survival boats. Solksjaer’s ship has been sinking slowly from the day he got the job, now it seems, it just struck ice.

Which begs the question; why does the club persist?

Granted, my sample size of research is a little slight, but watching United defeat Villareal midweek, followed by an undeserved draw at home to Everton on Saturday seems the perfect entry point to this Anglo-Norwegian soap opera. They should have lost both games. Instead, they won one and drew one, and not in a “the sign of a good team is getting results while playing badly” kinda way. If my eavesdropping and shallow-dives have proved anything, it is that these two games are indicative of the entire lifetime of Solkjaer’s reign at Old Trafford. Moments of magic camouflaging swathes of crippling mediocrity. Curious decisions masking a back catalogue of dubious indecision.

Since Solskjær took over at Old Trafford, there has been almost an expectant air that his demise would soon become him. That he was a Ratzinger type of Pope brought in to hold the throne for the next guy. The right guy. Instead, that guy has come and gone at least a half dozen times in the shape of Tuchel, Pochettino, Conte, Hansi Flick, Zidane, and Julian Nagelsmann. Buying Ronaldo was the final straw by the club, a last desperate act to save this iteration of a failed project. The only thing Ronaldo looks interested in saving is himself.

For a while now, it seems Ole’s most endearing quality was that he is not the other guy; not Mourinho, not Conte, not Van Gaal, and, above all else, that he is a badge kisser. He is of the club. Kind of like Mike Phelan, but in a suit.

In many ways, birth as a gaffer was the death of him, even if this is true of all managers, save for those exceptional few who write their own endings.

Methinks it’s not over yet, however. Such is the pattern of things, his difficult week will likely inspire a plucky run of results that will prolong everyone’s agony a little longer.

The diligent journalists will fill their oxygen tanks and dive deep once again, looking for new ways to tell a story that has only one ending. Me? Like the squirrel, I’ll hibernate for the winter, expecting to wake in spring and the story to be exactly the same.