Neil Humphreys: United should sack Solskjaer or accept decline
Manchester United will never improve with the old boy in charge
Anfield witnessed the match of the season. Two sworn enemies went at it from the first minute until the last.
Jamie Carragher and Roy Keane treated us to one hell of a row. It has already gone viral.
The Liverpool and Manchester United legends sniped at each other in the Sky Sports studio, their punditry giving way to a deep loathing of the other man's club.
But their pantomime revealed a deeper truth. Keane had the funnier lines, but the poorer argument.
His defence of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was loyal, but illogical.
The apoplectic pundit has jettisoned common sense and succumbed to nostalgia, joining Gary Neville, Patrice Evra, Rio Ferdinand and presumably the United board in seeing something that just is not there.
Solskjaer is a decent man, but the wrong manager for United.
The Red Devils are not improving. After a year in charge, there is no discernible tactical plan beyond some hazy rhetoric about youth and speed.
New signings regress. Existing players stagnate. Superstars vanish.
During his studio tirade, Keane continually dished out the word "time" like a landlord trying to empty his pub.
Loyalty is a precious commodity. By all means, give Solskjaer more time. Just accept that United's decline will continue.
To counter Keane's cry of "time", Carragher's favourite responses were "recruitment" and "coaching".
The board endorsed Solskjaer's hunt for Harry Maguire, signing an awe-inspiring £80 million ($140.2m) leader of men.
The Red Devils are still waiting for him to show up.
The Maguire at Anfield lost Virgil van Dijk at a set-piece, leaving the Liverpool defender to Brandon Williams, all 1.71m of him.
Neville has been quick to castigate Maguire, but was reluctant to criticise the zonal marking farce that had caused the confusion in the first place.
Maguire makes a convenient scapegoat, but it is Solskjaer who advocates zonal marking.
TIME TO DO WHAT?
As Keane rages about giving the manager more "time", disillusioned fans must ponder the worrying question: Time to do what?
Solskjaer favours a back four with a strong British core and a bullish presence in the middle.
He does not need time. He already has the defence he wants. But it is a defence that has shipped eight league goals from set-pieces.
United are conceding more than a goal a game, on average. It is woeful.
As Carragher pointed out, the obsession with transfer windows overlooks the fact that Solskjaer does not improve his players, new signings or otherwise.
Since the end of his caretaker tenure, the Norwegian has the worst win ratio of any permanent United boss since Herbert Bamlett, who led the Red Devils to relegation in 1931.
The Red Devils have never been richer in the boardroom or poorer in the dugout.
Clearly, money is not the major issue here.
Solskjaer was handed the funds after Romelu Lukaku's sale to sign an immediate replacement, but stuck to his principles of hand-rearing young talents instead.
Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood exude promise, but are still a bunch of forwards in search of a regular, productive formation.
When a rare Red Devil hits a rich seam of form, he gets flogged until his spirit breaks his back. Rashford reportedly played through agonising pain.
An initial stress fracture became a double stress fracture and United are left with a few days to fix a gaping hole that Solskjaer did not previously believe existed. He needed back-up for Rashford and Lukaku.
He bought neither.
Solskjaer's loyalists champion his understanding of the "Manchester United way" as if it's a secret code in a Dan Brown novel, as opposed to, you know, winning football matches with an attractive style of play.
So what is Solskjaer's style of play? He lined up with a 3-4-3 and unleashed the creative ingenuity of Andreas Pereira and Fred. Daniel James supported Martial up front, sort of.
Their efforts displayed the co-ordination of a blindfolded kid trying to pin the tail on a donkey.
After 23 games, Solskjaer finds himself 30 points behind Klopp, but his old teammates insist that he merely needs "time" to bridge the chasm.
Delusional optimism might be a more pleasurable experience for the United faithful right now than cynical reality.
They can keep the club legend and continue to reminisce about those sepia-tinted nights of 1999. Or they can rebuild a broken franchise.
But they cannot do both.
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