Solskjaer so ‘plucky’ for dropping injured footballers

Sarah Winterburn 19 Oct 2020 12:05 PM

No Paul Pogba. No Mason Greenwood. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is so, so brave. But first…

Identification parade

‘Liverpool’s full-backs told to change as ideal Virgil van Dijk replacement identified’

Fixed this for you, Mirror Sport.

‘Liverpool’s full backs told to change by Glen Johnson as ideal Virgil van Dijk replacement identified by Glen Johnson’

Hint hint

But the real Liverpool clicks were to be found in this Mirror article on Sunday night:

‘Virgil van Dijk has already hinted at his Liverpool replacement as injury fears confirmed’

Already? Even though he has just been injured? Just take a rest, Virgil; it’s not your job.

But of course it’s just a load of sweaty old bollocks because Van Dijk’s ‘hint’ at his ‘replacement’ came in September, when he called Fabinho “outstanding” after his performance against Chelsea.

Deep down he obviously knew this day would come.

Albatross

On Sunday afternoon, Tottenham threw away a three-goal lead to draw 3-3. How very Spursy.

On Monday morning, the back page of The Sun screams ‘BOGEY MAN’ because ‘Golfer Bale teed-off by 3 Irons’.

Somebody has lost their mind and that somebody is comedy Cockney Paul Jiggins.

One game into his Spurs return and Bale is the ‘BOGEY MAN’.

‘Bale went 24 Prem games without a win in his first spell – and the curse has struck again.’

Yes. One game is quite the ‘curse’ and Spurs – who threw away a lead against Newcastle and lost on the opening day against Everton – definitely would not have drawn that game without the cursed Bale.

‘Jose Mourinho denied the introduction of Bale – criticised at Real Madrid for playing too much golf – distracted his side.’

Was he practising his swing in Davinson Sanchez’s eye-line? Did Harry Winks trip over his tee?

Even Jiggins’ colleague Dave Kidd wrote that ‘Bale cannot take too much blame for this choke, though. The Welshman was rusty but he cannot carry the can for the sheer defensive panic which developed once West Ham scored their first.’

You think?

Ham burglar

The Sun’s headline of ‘MAC’S LOVING IT’ and sub-headline of ‘Alexis chips in with late strike to stun Eagles’ might have made slightly more sense if his name were McDonald rather than Mac Allister. It’s not even close.

So, so brave

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is something of a genius for eking a 4-1 win out of his Manchester United side at Newcastle on Saturday, particularly as he made several changes. He ‘deserves praise for making some very big calls’, according to Neil Custis of The Sun.

‘There was no place for Mason Greenwood in the whole squad. Spot on again.’

Yes, ‘spot on’ for dropping a player who “wasn’t fit to play”, according to Solskjaer himself after the game.

Solskjaer also revealed that Paul Pogba “had hip and back problems when he was away with France, so it wasn’t right to start him”, but Ian Ladyman did not let that get in the way of a whole ‘HAS OLE GOT THE GUTS TO DROP POGBA FOR GOOD?’ spiel in the Daily Mail.

‘It looked like the kind of team selection that gets a manager a response or moves him towards the sack.

‘On this occasion, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer came out on the right side of it and has now left himself with the biggest question of his time in charge at Manchester United. Is he brave enough to build a team without Paul Pogba in it?’

The biggest question of his time in charge of Manchester United is probably ‘why is he in charge of Manchester United?’ and not whether he is ‘brave’ enough to build a team without a man who was too injured to start against Newcastle United when they are facing PSG three days later.

‘Certainly, this was a plucky approach from the Norwegian in Newcastle. Clearly still irritated by his team’s 6-1 surrender at home to Tottenham two weeks ago, he made five changes to his team. It looked like a gamble.’

He had literally three of those changes forced upon him, with Anthony Martial suspended, Greenwood injured and Pogba not fit to start. So was it ‘plucky’ to drop a centre-half and a defensive midfielder after a 6-1 defeat?

One man he kept in his side was Marcus Rashford and he ‘seemed to relish the responsibility that came with the absence of his two attacking partners’, just a few days after Ladyman himself wrote that ‘he is not a centre forward, despite sometimes playing there for United, because he is not a completely natural goalscorer’ while appearing to suggest that he should look for a move away.

Maybe the problem was Pogba all along. It usually is.

Filter

Elsewhere in the Daily Mail, Ladyman seems to be under the bizarre misapprehension that reducing the Premier League to an 18-team league will immediately mean there will be no more shit teams in the Premier League.

‘So of all the self-serving drivel proposed by Liverpool and Manchester United as part of their vainglorious Project Big Picture, reducing the Premier League to 18 teams was not the worst idea. Standards in the bottom half of the table have been falling for years.

‘What did Norwich do for us last season? Or Huddersfield the year before? Those two clubs managed 37 points and eight wins between them. Thanks for coming but just one question: Why did you bother?’

Thankfully, Germany brings an example of what an 18-team league might look like.

What did Paderborn do for them last season? Or Nurnberg the year before? Those two clubs managed 39 points and seven wins between them. Thanks for coming but just one question: Why didn’t you get lots more points in an 18-team league because of course that should immediately solve the problem of teams being not quite good enough for the top flight?

The Wonder Boys

‘Man Utd wonderkids like Darron Gibson and Federico Macheda failed to live up to the hype – here’s where they are now’ made us laugh on The Sun website. Darron Gibson? Wonderkid? He didn’t even make his Premier League debut until he was 21. When he was already pretty much bald.

‘Here’s a cautionary tale. In the summer, former youth star Darron Gibson, once described by Sir Alex Ferguson as “the new Scholes”, was let go by Salford before being re-signed by the League Two side.’

Except Ferguson never called him “the new Scholes” at all. Back in April 2010 – when ‘wonderkid’ Gibson was closing in on 23 – Ferguson said:

“That was his sixth goal of the season [in all competitions] and you cannot dismiss that. It is the kind of contribution we used to get from Paul Scholes. He used to get me 12 to 14 goals from midfield all the time and we haven’t had a player like that in a while.”

It was actually his fifth goal – Ferguson was no keeper of statistics – and he was merely saying he was a midfielder capable of scoring goals, as was Scholes.

Over a decade later, that has mutated along with the notion that anyone ever called him a ‘wonderkid’, just so The Sun can hoover up some easy Manchester United clicks.