The English football club Manchester United announced Sunday, November 21 the departure of its coach, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, after a series of poor results, including a defeat (4-1) the day before at the poorly classified Watford. “Ole will forever be a legend at Manchester United and it is with regret that we made this difficult decision”, wrote the club in a statement.
“While the past few weeks have been disappointing, they should not obscure all the work that has been done over the past three years to rebuild the foundations for long term success.”, continue the Red Devils.
A disappointing season
Arrived in December 2018 after José Mourinho, who had left a demotivated and disunited club, the Norwegian had managed to improve the results, taking the team to the final of the Europa League and to the 2e championship place last season.
But, despite heavy investments in recruitment this summer – Raphaël Varane, Jadon Sancho and Cristiano Ronaldo – the club is currently 7e of the championship, 12 lengths behind the leader, Chelsea, after 12 days. United have won just four of their last 13 games in all competitions and have often delivered dismal performances, lacking in soul, desire and ideas.
Protected for a long time by the fact that the club could not find him a credible and immediately available replacement, Solskjaer did not resist another distressing meeting on Saturday. It is one of his assistants and a former captain of the Red Devils, Michael Carrick, who will act for the next matches.
Manchester in particular has a crucial meeting in the Champions League on Tuesday at Villarreal, and will move to Chelsea on Sunday before receiving Arsenal (5e) the following Thursday, three games on which his season could largely be played.
The club said it is currently looking for a coach to end the season. According to the English press, Zinédine Zidane would be the priority of Mancuniens to lead their team, but he would not be very interested. Other names that keep coming up are Leicester coach Brendan Rodgers, Ajax Amstedam Erik Ten Hag and even PSG coach Mauricio Pochettino, but their situation is more likely to change this summer than ‘during the season.