\nLONDON, 19 Oct: Paul Pogba had seen enough. So had many disgruntled Manchester United fans.
\n\u201cWe need to find something. We need to change something,\u201d an exasperated Pogba said after United\u2019s late collapse in a 4-2 loss at Leicester in the Premier League on Saturday.
\nOle Gunnar Solskjaer didn\u2019t disagree.
\n\u201cWe need to look at the whole set-up and balance of the team,\u201d the United manager said, moments after Pogba\u2019s outburst. \u201cAnd maybe something has to give.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s that time once again \u2014 it seems to happen on two or three occasions per season \u2014 when United appears on the verge of a crisis and Solskjaer, a club great without the managerial resume to go with it, is called out as someone unfit to be leading England\u2019s biggest team.
\nThe plain statistics are United has won two of its last seven games in all competitions, has dropped to sixth in the Premier League, and is already out of the English League Cup. The team isn\u2019t in last place in its Champions League group only because Cristiano Ronaldo scored a 95th-minute winner against Villarreal last month.
\nThe season is young \u2014 United has played only 11 games \u2014 but key issues haven\u2019t been fixed: An imbalanced midfield, an attack relying on individualism over any coherent plan, sloppiness in defense.
\nThere\u2019s also a schedule that sees United face its hardest run of games so far. Back-to-back games against Atalanta in the Champions League \u2014 the first is on Wednesday at Old Trafford \u2014 come on either side of Premier League games against Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester City.
\nSolskjaer, who has yet to win a trophy in nearly three years as United\u2019s manager, has been here before.
\nThe last time he was under this much heat was December, after a loss to Leipzig that eliminated United from the Champions League. Solskjaer\u2019s team didn\u2019t lose any of its next 13 games.
\nIn the 2019-20 season, a 1-0 loss at Newcastle in October extended United\u2019s winless run to five games and led to calls for Solskjaer to go. United drew 1-1 against Liverpool the next game, ending its fierce rival\u2019s eight-match winning run to open the league, and then lost only two of its next 14 games.
\nSolskjaer came under more pressure following a 2-0 home loss to Burnley in late January. United\u2019s players were jeered by their own fans, yet responded with a 19-game unbeaten run in all competitions.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been through this before and come through stronger as individuals and as a team,\u201d Solskjaer said Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m just looking forward to the response now.\u201d
\nCan Solskjaer pull through again?<\/p>\n
Central Midfield
\nThis is the department causing United the biggest problem, and the area Solskjaer probably regrets not strengthening in the offseason with a player like West Ham\u2019s Declan Rice.
\nUnited has three central midfielders \u2014 Nemanja Matic, Fred and Scott McTominay \u2014 who all have flaws and can\u2019t really be trusted to manage a game on their own as the deep-lying anchorman. Matic is too immobile, Fred too impetuous, and McTominay is too all-action to be restricted to just sitting in front of the defense. A feature of United\u2019s games this season is the sight of the team getting counterattacked and the midfield getting easily bypassed.
\nFred and McTominay have sometimes played as a pair and that might be what Solskjaer resorts to, giving United more energy and a better pressing game. That does, of course, mean Solskjaer has to drop a big-name player further forward.<\/p>\n
Pogba\u2019s Position
\nMore than five years into his second spell at Old Trafford and United still hasn\u2019t seen the best of Pogba.
\nIt seems clear he cannot operate as one of the two deeper-lying midfielders because it affects United\u2019s pressing game, and Bruno Fernandes seems nailed in the No. 10 role behind the striker. Pogba might, then, be best suited playing on the left wing, where he can cut inside and get closer to United\u2019s attackers.
\nBut that leaves Solskjaer with just one available slot \u2014 the right wing \u2014 for four high-profile players: Mason Greenwood, $100 million offseason signing Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial.
\nTellingly, United\u2019s League Cup elimination deprives Solskjaer of a competition to give some potentially dissatisfied players on the fringe of the team \u2014 like Martial, Edinson Cavani, Donny van de Beek \u2014 some much-needed game time.<\/p>\n
The Ronaldo Problem
\nRonaldo has scored five goals in six starts since returning to United. He is doing his job as a scorer \u2014 who could have expected otherwise? \u2014 but it\u2019s how he is affecting the rest of the team that\u2019s an underlying issue.
\nRonaldo is 36 and his decreased mobility and ability to press from the front as United\u2019s central striker looks to be impacting the players behind him. The tactic seems to be: Get the ball to Ronaldo and hope for the best. Sometimes that will work \u2014 see his stoppage-time winner against Villarreal, which came from a speculative cross into the area \u2014 but on many occasions it won\u2019t.
\nUnited can be overran at times with Ronaldo as the striker and three attacking players behind him whose strength isn\u2019t tracking back. In that way, he is a solution but also a problem. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON, 19 Oct: Paul Pogba had seen enough. So had many disgruntled Manchester United fans. \u201cWe need to find something. We need to change something,\u201d an exasperated Pogba said after United\u2019s late collapse in a 4-2 loss at Leicester in the Premier League on Saturday. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer didn\u2019t disagree. \u201cWe need to look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-174542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}