What makes little sense to me is the utterly inconsistent decision making coming out of the club.
We started the summer wanting young, hungry, players with points to prove who want to play for the club. Fine, I doubt that the likes of James (and Longstaff if it had happened) are enough to fix some of the problems we've got, but I can sort of see the logic of a different approach given 5 years of failure. Sanchez is a big problem, and I can understand the club being hesitant to repeat their mistakes.
We then seemed surprised that English players attract a premium and spent ages haggling with the clubs for the two big money players we have signed before, eventually, just paying what they wanted in the first place, and then interspersed those attempts with two genuinely baffling periods of interest in Dybala and Eriksen who blatantly don't fit the profile of player we'd been looking at and were reluctant to join.
Eriksen in particular makes absolutely no sense. If you weren't talking to him in the months before because you didn't think he wanted to come, why then start working on a deal only to pull out a day later because you don't think he wants to come. It's baffling. I'd be tempted to agree with the suggestion that the club encourages links to big name players to placate the fans ire, if not for the make it makes everyone even angrier when these things don't come off.
And then Herrera. I know some people tried to convince themselves he was average and it wasn't a big deal (he wasn't and it was) but he fought for the shirt every time he stepped out on the pitch and he has the energy and mobility to play in a pressing team. He was perfect for what Ole wants to do, and it's criminal that he (at the very least) has not been replaced.
Herrera's actual leaving makes some sense, perhaps his wage demands were unreasonable, but not when you consider the clubs attempts to keep a want-away De Gea by throwing absolutely insane amounts of money at him, nor the desire to keep Pogba despite his clearly wanting out. If the club's wishes are to sign players who only, desperately want to play for us then it's not one they're applying to players who are already here. If both Pogba and De Gea produce the dogshit they did at the backend of last season then the season is over before it has started. For all the talk of Herrera's demands, he is one of only two outfield players to win our player of the year award since Ferguson left (and I'd argue that Shaw's was relatively undeserved and simply said more about everyone else) and a bumper payday for him would have been less underserved than basically every contract we've given out over the past 6 years.
Especially when you consider the players we did renew. Phil Jones and Juan Mata have absolutely no right still being here (as nice as Mata is, we're not running a charity), both have underperformed for years and both are blocking paths to the first team for the young, hungry players with points to prove that the club is supposed to want to base the new ethos around. Jones is a particularly baffling one given there's no reason why Tuanzebe can't fill in as the sixth choice centre back. If we go slightly longer term, then we also have the insane renewal of Rojo to add in.
Again, though, you can sort of understand that desire to keep bodies around for the sake of squad depth, even if we should have learned our lesson that it's pointless having a deep squad if it's full of shite, until you remember that we're utterly content to feck Lukaku off, not replace him and go into a season with just Martial, Rashford and Greenwood as our options up top.
And maybe it will work out alright. Maybe Solskjaer is a managerial genius who can turn water into wine, and maybe Greenwood, Gomes, Garner and Chong are a Class of 92 redux who are ready to make the step up, and maybe the paper-thin squad in every position other than centre-back will somehow not break down this season (despite us having an injury crisis every year). But, thanks to the incoherent, inconsistent, and downright illogical decision making at this club that's pretty much what needs to happen. Even those players only being good, rather than great, even Solskjaer being pretty decent, even a completely normal amount of injuries are going to be enough to completely kill us.
Once again, we've created a situation for the manager where they can barely win. And once again, if and when it does go tits up, it won't be the man responsible that the goldfish on here will blame.
