Thought about this a lot last night. Hopefully this is a balanced opinion on Ole, feel free to agree, disagree.
Last night said a lot about Ole both as manager of people and also as a tactician. In the majority of big games I have no concerns with him or the coaching team. We always seem to be well drilled and create chances. Ok he is no Klopp spraying flemgh everywhere through his shiny white teeth, nor is he a Guardiola constantly waving his arms at the minutest mistake from the touchline. He has his own style and I am comfortable with that. What stood out last night was this was no defensive master class either. Containment football yes and that is the right thing to do against Neymar, Mbappe and Di Maria. Park the bus no. Go back when we won over in Paris last time round and if we all take our red tinted spec's off we can all say it was a great night but the finest of margins saw us through right at the last kick. Last night we controlled large parts of the game and created chances not only from counter attack but also from build up play. There was eleven battles on the pitch last night and for a man, utd dominated those battles. When you are seeing Mbappe being pushed to the wings and Neymar picking the ball up in his own half, that's not luck, that's good preparation and more importantly progress. If Martial had his shooting boots on the score could have been more.
Also worth noting that he puts players in because he trusts them. Take Axel last night. No doubt one of the biggest games of his career. The snipers are out, the vultures are circling, every week a new crisis at Utd. He steps in and plays like has been there for the last 60 games. Revisionists will tell you Jose used to do the same thing. Jose would throw players in to make a public statement to the board i.e. McTomminay and then he would throw other players under the bus. You don't need to be a life coach or leading business manager to understand that you get better performance and results when everyone is rowing the boat in the same direction. Would you prefer how Ole is managing Greenwood for his misdemeanours or the way Jose is trying to publicly provoke Delle Ali into a reaction and performance.
My criticism of Ole, and this is an area where he needs to improve is get better at managing the troughs. When we go through a bad patch it quite often is a BAD patch and it takes a two or three game bounce to get it back on course. You got stuffed under Fergie, you got a reaction usually next game. Same with all leading coaches. He needs to minimise the pick up time between losses and bad performances. That can only come from consistency of performance on the pitch.
Lets make no bones about it, Utd have a Lot of catching up to Liverpool and City. Whether Ole is the right man to do that, only the fullness of time will tell us but if he gets the bullet today tomorrow or in five years but I dare say the club purely from a footballing perspective will be in a much stronger position than when Jose, LVG, Moyes were shown the door. I am not going to get carried away with last nights result. Great team performance all things considered. Nor am I a too concerned about the spurs result in the bigger context of this season.
He’s been permanently trolling since March.