O’Shea: Give job to Solskjaer

John O’Shea believes Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has already demonstrated that he could do the Manchester United job on a permanent basis.

Solskjaer was the senior figure in United’s starting XI on the day in October 1999 when O’Shea made his professional debut — and they remained regular team-mates until the former’s retirement in 2007.

Wednesday’s 2-0 victory at Newcastle means he has overseen four victories from four to equal a record set by club great Matt Busby, and O’Shea is already convinced he can succeed long-term.

Reading’s O’Shea will be attempting to undermine that “amazing start” when the teams face each other in the FA Cup at Old Trafford on Saturday, but he is relishing his former club’s success under a manager who said he wants to remain in the job.

O’Shea, now 37, said: “He’s [making] a hell of an impression to get the job, that’s for sure.

“To bring that freedom of expression and enjoyment; they’re at Manchester United because they’re good players. That’s the big thing.

“Knowing Ole, the type of player and person he was, you can see why the board and the club decided to go that way.

“It’ll be that enjoyment factor, and that professionalism and killer instinct he had. That’ll have been the key. The enjoyment and maintaining the standard of what the club and fans hope and expect to see.

“They’ve had a run of games where they’ve really put their foot down and go on and finished teams off as well. Everything he seems to be doing at the minute... he makes a sub and 40 seconds later, the sub scores.

“Everything’s going in his favour at the minute, but I hope he stays unbeaten in the league and gets knocked out of the cup.

“If he keeps that run going, if he has success in, hopefully not the FA Cup, but the Champions League, and carries on the run in the league, he’ll be putting himself as a frontrunner for the job.

“He’ll want to carry on that momentum he’s created early on, and he’ll definitely be under consideration.

“He’s been brought in until the summer, but that can all change very quickly.”

Despite United’s fine start to life under Solskjaer, midfielder Ander Herrera insists he is not thinking about the top four.

Substitute Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford did the damage in a 2-0 win at embattled Newcastle, cutting the gap to the Champions League spots down to six points.

United were an eye-watering 11 points off the pace when Jose Mourinho was fired, but Herrera is staying focused.

“When I saw we were maybe 12 points behind, I decided not to think about it, go game-by-game and that’s what we did,” the Spaniard said.

That’s what I did at least, and things are going well, so I don’t want to change. I am not going to think about that.

“If we continue this run, we will be closer to the top four but it’s not something that kills my mind right now.

“(Newcastle) is not easy at all. I think we faced a very organised and very tough team.

“I think they’re going to stay in the Premier League for sure because I found them really, really tough. But we are in a good moment.

“Even when we are not playing great, we have the feeling that we can win the game. We control the game, we have the possession, we play in the opponent’s half and we have fantastic offensive players — even the ones that were on the bench.”

He added: “Alexis (Sanchez) made a great assist, so I think we’re in really good form and we have to continue like this.

This game is going to strengthen our bench players as well, Romelu and Alexis. We really need them so a lot of good things to take from today’s performance.

“But the next Premier League game is Tottenham and it is going to be even tougher.”