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“If I’m Solskjaer, I’d build a team around him”. So insisted Danny Higginbottom last week to Sky Sports while laying out exactly how he would get the best out of the potentially brilliant, often disappointing Paul Pogba.
It is a well-worn trope that was fraying at the edges even just a few months into the 26-year-old’s extravagantly costly return to Old Trafford. By now it seems positively archaic.
With a heavy sigh though let’s go through it all again. Please don’t stop us if you’ve heard this before. You will have heard this before.
Pogba was so very effective for Juventus and plays his best football now for France because he thrives on freedom of movement and two disciplined centre-circle destroyers stationed behind him gives him that freedom. If he had that at Manchester United he would be consistently sensational.
The problem with that thinking of course is that Jose Mourinho, and latterly Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, have utilised their enigmatic star in such a way, many times over. And far too often he has been a show pony when they have needed a thoroughbred. On other occasions, just to mix things up, he has been completely anonymous.
On the same day that Higginbottom was suggesting that the simple answer to all of Manchester United’s woes was to double-down on their chief hindrance it was reported in the Independent that the player in question is very keen to push through a summer move to Real Madrid with an eye-watering fee of £130m mooted.
That would represent a decent mark-up on a failure. That would give Solskjaer a colossal sum to bring in two world class replacements, one more defensively minded (Declan Rice for example), the other a creative in the mould of Ivan Rakitic.
It’s just a suggestion.
Hustling and bustling ahead of the one-man soap opera to very little effect Romelu Lukaku is another of United’s recent marquee signings who is as per Goal.com also looking elsewhere, namely Serie A.
The misfiring striker has put in performances this term so utterly inept that it has prompted open hilarity from rival fans. He has failed to score against the top six. He has failed to score at all in the league since the start of February. Recently Gayr Neville said this of a forward who cost more than Mo Salah and Sergio Aguero combined – “You see him make one big run and he looks absolutely shattered. He almost looks tired after one or two runs. He’s a big decision.”
He is not a big decision. Nor is the selling of Pogba. Indeed both – who between them earn a staggering £470k per week – could be said to be no-brainers.
Solskjaer has a huge rebuild on his hands this summer and he should start at the top, bringing in players who will lead; players who will be utterly committed to his cause. It is in short, time to begin anew because if for no other reason another article about how to get the best out of their marquee mistakes will drive us all to insanity.