Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer fielded a weaker team today, against Leicester City in the FA Cup quarterfinal and paid for it, losing 3-1. After the match, Solskjaer said he had no regrets over his team selection, and he maintained that he would do again if given the chance.
He says he made these decision due to the team being fatigued. Bruno Fernandes and Luke Shaw began the game on the bench while Amad Diallo made a surprise appearance.
“I would have started the same team again,” Solskjaer said.
“We felt they had more than 45 minutes in them [Pogba and Van de Beek] and they are important players for us, that’s why we started them.
“Every team selection has reasons behind it, Bruno has played lots of football – he broke all his records physically on Thursday. He is a human being, he’s played a game every three or four days.
“It was a chance to start both Donny and Paul but the accumulation of games has caught up with us. With Bruno, he wants to play, but sometimes you have to make decisions for the benefit of the team.
“The accumulation of games has caught up with us. We picked a team that we felt would win the game or give us a foundation to win the game, players like Donny and Paul wouldn’t.
“You’re always disappointed at the end of the line in a cup run. We couldn’t find the normal spark, brightness and energy. All the games have maybe caught up with us. Thursday was a big night for us. Today we didn’t have that zip you need to create chances and stop goals.”
Well, they won’t have to worry as much about added workload as they have now crashed out of another competition. It’s one more opportunity gone, for the first trophy of the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer era. Technically, all the post Sir Alex Ferguson managers at United have won a trophy, even “the chosen one” David Moyes, who claimed the Community Shield.
OGS has reached four semifinals thus far, but lost all of them. United are in the quarterfinals of the Europa League, where they will face Granada on Apr 8, and again on April 15.
They are now off, due to the international break, until April 4, when they’ll take on Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.