Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's Cardiff City reign: Confused, chaotic, clueless and crazy... Paul Abbandonato's verdict
As Solskjaer stands on the brink, Paul Abbandonato says the Bluebirds boss has been a desperate disappointment and his crazy tinkering has cost the team dear
This time last week I had the pleasure of writing one of the nicer Bluebirds stories of recent times.
How official Home Office statistics proved the club had rid themselves of their old hooliganism stigma and had made Cardiff City Stadium the most fan friendly environment in football.
Well done to everybody involved in that. What a shame the truly enormous strides being made off the field aren’t matched on it by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team.
If anything, it’s the opposite.
Under Solskjaer’s management, Cardiff City are hurtling backwards at an alarming rate of knots and I don’t see any evidence of the Norwegian proving he can stop the demise any time soon.
I was amongst those excited
when Solskjaer was first brought into the club as manager. He had a burgeoning reputation as one of the brightest young bosses in the game, was a wanted man in boardrooms in the Premier League and on the continent.
Well talk about hype getting in the way of hard-nosed football reality. Solskjaer has been a desperate disappointment as Cardiff boss and the team’s dip down to 17th in the Championship table is entirely down to his mis-management.
Cardiff, under Solskjaer, appear confused, chaotic, and clueless. They are like that because of his non-stop tinkering, which has led to a lack of consistency and pattern, and some truly crass decision-making when it comes to team selection.
Harsh words, I accept, which will probably be dismissed by Solskjaer as the views of someone who “knows nothing about football.”
That age-old cliche those professionals in the game trot out when they come in for criticism. But my views are no different to those of many of Cardiff’s paying customers who have lost any confidence in Solskjaer.
Vincent Tan has
spent a fortune on giving his Norwegian boss what, on paper at least, looks by far the strongest squad in the Championship. Certainly the biggest, with defender Sean Morrison trumpeting that Cardiff’s second X1 should be good enough to earn promotion.
The trouble is that under Solskjaer,
we don’t know what the first XI is, let alone the second team.
Tinker, tinker, tinker. Change, change, change. David Marshall in goal, then throw the other places up in the air for grabs.
It’s early days, of course, but Cardiff are 17th in the table for a reason. They lack as much shape, pattern and tactical consistency today as they did when Solskjaer first entered the fray as manager back at the beginning of January.
I hesitate to say he’s lost the plot because, as far as some Cardiff fans are concerned, we wonder if he had it in the first place.
These are the facts. Solskjaer has been in charge of Cardiff for 25 League games. Just five of those have been won.
Only once, against Stoke last season, has he kept the same starting X1. He seems as far removed from knowing his best team today as he did for that first match in charge against West Ham.
That was a home loss, of course, just like the last two games against Norwich and Middlesbrough, results which have led to Bluebirds fans clamouring for change and demanding Tan asks Tony Pulis to ride to the rescue.
They, like me, simply cannot fathom some of Solskjaer’s decision-making. Against Boro he played Matthew Connolly at left-back and Anthony Pilkington just in front of him. Two right-footers on the left-flank.
I’ve been a huge critic of Andrew Taylor, but I was almost crying out for his return the other night!
It was perfectly summed up for me when Adam le Fondre had the ball near the Boro box towards the end, looked left, looked left again, looked left yet again... and still had nobody anywhere near him in support. He was forced to go inside, where he invariably lost the ball.
Four days earlier, Solskjaer had started with a midfield of Peter Whittingham, Aron Gunnarsson and Joe Ralls, three players he inherited from Malky Mackay. So what on earth was the point of signing Kagisho Dikgacoi, Tom Adeyemi and Guido Burtgstaller in the summer?
He keeps playing Gunnarsson in the 10 role. Aron has many strengths, being a midfield warrior one of them, but he isn’t, and never will be, a creative footballer. Surely Mats Daehli or Kim Bo-Kyung are better options in that key position?
When he first came into the job, Solskjaer pledged an adventurous, free-flowing brand of football to wow the fans. He wanted ball-playing centre-backs, which is why Bruno Manga and Juan Cala were chosen against Middlesbrough.
What we saw in the second half was lump it up to Kenwyne Jones route one rubbish. A style totally alien to Manga and Cala.
It got Cardiff absolutely nowhere, was the worst display of that method of football I’ve seen from the Bluebirds since Dave Jones’ Class of 2011 adopted similar tactics in a play-off loss to Reading. That night Jon Parkin was up front. Enough said.
Cardiff were booed off the field against Boro, at half-time and full-time, by angry supporters making their views known to Solskjaer. Others simply voted with their feet, the attendance dipping below 20,000 for the first time in four years.
This was the lowest League gate at Cardiff City Stadium since the 18,000 who attended a 1-1 draw with Sheffield United back on March 24, 2010.
Solskjaer has presided over some utterly abject Cardiff display at home and Middlesbrough was every bit as bad as the Bluebirds crashing to Hull and Crystal Palace.
The most damning thing about that game wasn’t the result, more the fact the Boro came to Cardiff’s lair, in front of the Bluebirds’ own fans, and were more committed.
Any 50-50 duels invariably went Boro’s way. There were some loaded 60-40 in Cardiff’s favour that Boro also won.
Their commitment and endeavour was a lesson to Solskjaer. A throwback, in a way, to the sort of Cardiff team we had become accustomed to under Mackay.
But everything is tied in, I believe, to the confusion that reigns as a result of the non-stop changes. The players simply don’t seem to know how to get themselves back into a game.
The 90 minutes were encapsulated right at the end when Peter Whittingham, one of the finest set piece experts I have seen, took two corners as Cardiff searched the equaliser. The first sailed over everyone’s heads, the second didn’t even beat the first man. Pathetic.
Clearly the Norwegian titles Solskjaer won with Molde and reserve gongs with Manchester United mean absolutely nothing when it comes to the sharp end of our game here.
When Solskjaer breezed in, huge reputation coming with him, there were suggestions that if pulled up trees with Cardiff, he could become
a future Manchester United manager.
After his work here, Solskjaer has even less chance than David Moyes of going back to Old Trafford.