Well, of course it’s difficult to know what to believe. Whitwell and Norcroft usually don’t base their speculation on nothing, then again, it’s hard to tell sometimes when they have a good source or when they or their sources are second guessing. Being from Norway, a friend of someone I know talks to Ole and asked him point blank about wether he had wanted the Ronaldo move. The answer he said was a clear no - that he accepted it but didn’t want it.
I don’t really expect anyone to believe ‘ITK’-stuff like this, and there are room for misunderstandings in this story too, just as even solid journalists often get quite a few details wrong even if they get the big picture and main themes quite well.
What makes sense to me about the version in the info I have, is that we know that Solskjær had ambitions of getting United to play with higher press. He said so in his early interviews, he did it with Molde, and we saw him start with it several times only to retract when the players lost too many lose goals. Solskjær learnt a lot about low defending and direct attacks under Egil Drillo Olsen, Ferguson and Queiroz, and it may be his strongest suit as a coach, but he was inspired by Meulensteen, Guardiola and Klopp early on to defend higher up and create overloads, and he implemented featurea of this quite successfully with Utd reserves and Molde. This was also alligned with McKenna’s and Carrick’s ideas, and getting Varane and Sancho seemed like maybe the crucial pieces of a puzzle to be able to stand high and create overloads. I’m in no doubt that was the strategy for the new season last year as well, for taking the final step from finalist and second place to real challengers. I think the implosion was mainly the result of how it didn’t work well enough, and the players reactions when there were setbacks. I don’t think Ronaldo was the main reason. But it would be clear to Ole that Ronaldo was not the player needed to make this kind of transition. In fact, he could have been very useful against Villarreal in the final a few months before, stylistically, but not with the way we lined up against Leeds and Southampton in last season’s openers.
The second thing is that Solskjær knew Ronaldo from close up. He would know, perhaps better than anyone, that Ronaldo was the most opposite personality of himself thinkable. He knew how to get the most out of Ighalo and a 36 year old Cavani, but he would also know very well that Ronaldo was not a good candidate for such a role. To me it makes very little sense that Solskjær would want Ronaldo in at huge wages at that point in time. Ferguson probably would, Woodward certainly would, Joel Glazer certainly would, but Solskjær, I find that unlikely.
I thought I'd respond to your post in this thread, because I feel it's important to discuss Solskjaer's shortcomings as a manager, which imo had a detrimental effect on Rangnick's short tenure as the placeholder on a temporary basis. Because the team Rangnick inherited was overseen and developed by Solskjaer in preceding years. I don't think we can isolate Rangnick's short stint without scrutinizing the several years in which Solskjaer went about developing the team.
I loved Solskjaer as a player but I have to be honest about my thoughts regarding his tenure as the manager of the club. I have to put sentiments to one side and give a honest appraisal of his work at the club.
I agree with you about Solskjaer saying he wanted to implement a progressive play style, which involved pressing and counter pressing high up the pitch. Solskjaer even mentioned he wanted to 'play a high line like Jurgen' but didn't have the players. So if we take a closer look at the players he did sign before Ronaldo's arrival, then imo it's more than likely, he also signed Ronaldo which is backed up by tier 1 journalists like Whitwell, Crafton and Northcroft.
If one has ambitions of playing a high line with a emphasis on high intensity, forward/vertical play and to then counter that with high pressing/counter pressing in the event of a turn over of possession, then you don't sign Aaron Wan Bissaka, and I'd also argue you don't sign Harry Maguire for such a play style. Because a fullback is extremely important to give you a out-ball and has to be technically and physically of the requisite standard to evade the press, progress play and provide the intensity up and down the flank. And a CB has to be good in possession (could argue Maguire was) but he also has to have the physical and athletical capabilities to contain/control a larger space imo, especially against teams who like to defend high in numbers. And that's something Maguire was weak at due to him not being the most mobile or agile player, and hence was always going to be a weakness in a high defensive line. So both Wan Bissaka and Maguire were very poor signings if we measure their attributes against what Solskjaer spoke about implementing, which was to adopt a imposing playing style similar to Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool. I actually brought this up at the time, and said both signings were poor due to what Solskjær spoke about implementing. It was a very poor transfer window.
Bruno Fernandes is said to be Soskjaer's best signing, but imo signing him further destabilised the midfield composition and further highlighted a lack of thought when it came to constructing the midfield. We already had Pogba who was best utilised in a more advanced role and with Matic already at the club, it would've been sensible to balance the midfield out by signing a creative #8 instead, and we'd have a midfield three that is much more balanced. But Solskjaer instead went ahead with signing Bruno and caused a imbalance in the midfield imo.
For many years we've been in need of a right sided attacker/winger. And Solskjaer it seems identified a left sided attacker to fill a gap on the right wing. Jadon Sancho was best utilised on the left imo and I mentioned that in the players thread before we signed him. The players youth coaches also said he was best utilised on the left and at Dortmund the right winger was their wingback Achraf Hakimi who was statistically the most dangerous player for the opposition due to his involvement in any given passage of play/sequence resulting in Dortmund having the highest chance to score a goal. And when we eventually signed Sancho, Solskjaer admitted in one of his press conferences, that Sancho preferred playing on the left. Rangnick mentioned the same and ten Hag has also said the same about Sancho preferring the left. We needed a right winger but we ended up signing another left winger.
I would actually be surprised if Solskjaer didn't want to sign Ronaldo after how things transpired with his other big signings which made little sense as far as creating a team to play a proactive, attacking style, which he spoke about. He ended up creating a reactive team with the signings he made. And credit to Kieran Mckenna who still managed to coach the players considering he was having to coach some players who were far away from the play style he was accustomed to coaching. I think without Mckenna things would've ended even quicker for Solskjaer, because Solskjaer in his own words has never been a coach.
Whoever came in as the placeholder, was going to have issues imo. Not only did we have a imbalanced team but according to reports, Solskjaer had alienated many of the playing squad by making promises of game time which never came to fruition. And that created a toxicity in the dressing room which imo engulfed Rangnick who can't possibly have been prepared for what was to come. He didn't help himself with his idiotic press conferences by attacking the players he would later need to perform for him on the pitch. Rangnick might not have been a great coach but he had shown in his career that he could at least be a good one, where he demonstrably implemented a proactive attacking game style in a major European league where his Hoffenheim team was playing a brand of attacking football that would cause Bayern Munich problems. I remember one game where Hoffenheim played Bayern, and the game was so high intense with ferocious pressing that one media outlet in Germany (quote below) called for the game to be included in the curriculum for people taking coaching courses.
Local newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called for a DVD of the match to be included “in the curriculum for the German FA’s manager course: this much pace, this much intensity, this much of all the things that have unfortunately only been characteristic of football elsewhere, has not been seen in Germany over 90 minutes.”
The idea to hire him was correct, on a short term basis, but the damage that was already done before his arrival has to be taken into consideration and Rangnick further destabilised that by his attack on the players.
