Winning has two ancillary effects. On the one hand, it gives you sporting capital. Folks point to your record and are more likely to overlook a stumble or a bad decision. That, in turn, means you can be that little bit more daring and experimental, which is a good thing.
On the other hand it raises expectations, sometimes unrealistically so, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer experienced the former on Sunday in Manchester United’s 2-0 loss away to Arsenal.
Deploying Paul Pogba in a wide left position of a midfield four isn’t what cost his team the game, but neither did it help. Shifting your best creative player into a peripheral role he’s never played before is certainly counterintuitive, but maybe it was the sort of curveball designed to befuddle Unai Emery or force Ainsley Maitland-Niles deeper.
Whatever it was, it didn’t work, and Solskjaer soon made adjustments, but the point is that he feels emboldened to make such decisions — even when they backfire — and that’s the sign of a manager who is confident and willing to take risks.
Just how quickly Solskjaer has settled and how comfortable he appears to be in his decision-making is remarkable. This is not a man auditioning for a job; this is a man acting as if he’s the long-term boss. Folks like that imbue their players with confidence, as long as the mistakes are occasional and not repeated, and that’s not something to underestimate.
And that brings us to expectations. While it may be a bit uncomfortable for some, the fact is that United’s recent results have outstripped their performances.
And substantially so. There are plenty of mitigating factors — from the many injuries to the fact that, between Europe and the FA Cup, they haven’t had a midweek off in a long time — but it’s ironic that Sunday at the Emirates was arguably one of their better performances.
This is going to be Solskjaer’s next challenge.
Even as they continue to push on three fronts, at some point the absentees and structural inadequacies in the squad he inherited may well catch up with him. (If you are an expected goals type, the numbers bear this out: United have nearly six more goals than their xG would suggest, and they’ve conceded three fewer since Solskjaer took over.)
A top-four finish and runs in the Champions League and FA Cup would already be a tremendous achievement given the state of the club when he took over. It’s important that the exceptional results thus far don’t lead some to forget what the club was like in mid-December, and that if there is a slowdown — and there won’t necessarily be one — Solskjaer’s entire body of work at Old Trafford is taken into account.
