Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has just begun his new gig as Manchester United caretaker manager, and his first test comes at Cardiff City, a team he once managed. The Norwegian has immediately shown that things are going to be different under him, naming a travel squad and a starting XI that we would not have seen under Jose Mourinho.
Solskjaer, in the very first team that he selected, picked the three players (Paul Pogba, Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial) who had the rockiest relationship with Jose Mourinho while the Portugese was in charge. Or at least the trio of players that had the most visible public quarrels with the former manager.
? Team news for #CARMUN is in ? #MUFC
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 22, 2018
While Shaw has been a first team regular when fit and Martial seeing first team football sometimes, Pogba had been pointlessly benched under Mourinho in recent weeks and didn’t even see a minute of playing time in the club’s loss to their biggest rivals, Liverpool, last week.
The 45-year-old interim manager also showed a commitment to the youth academy products, naming a very highly rated duo of players, Angel Gomes and James Garner to the travel squad. Neither were named in the match day team, but even bringing them along shows an ambition towards better developing the youth prospects, something that Mourinho wasn’t doing enough of, in the eyes of the board.
It didn’t take long for the good times to get rolling under Solskjaer either. Forward Marcus Rashford scored from just four minutes in to make it 1-0 early on.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, regularly appears as a guest pundit on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
He also contributes sociopolitical essays to Chicago Now. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. The content of his cat’s Instagram account is unquestionably superior to his.