However he does, Solskjaer will prove everyone wrong

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is deserving of the Manchester United job, but his time at the club so far has been a mystery.

Perhaps no manager in the history of football has been better situated to piss off more disparate groups of people at the same time than the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer of Right Now, who was on Thursday announced as Manchester United’s new full-time manager.

The Norwegian was initially appointed in only a caretaker capacity, and it was assumed he would be replaced in the summer by one of the game’s managerial elite, Mauricio Pochettino or Max Allegri or Zinedine Zidane or basically anyone the highlight of whose top flight coaching experience amounted to more than overseeing Cardiff’s relegation in 2014.

It would have been hard for Solskjaer to make things worse when he arrived, such was the degree of toxicity surrounding the club during Jose Mourinho’s final weeks in charge, but nor did anyone seriously expected him to make the impact he has.

United have won 14 of 19 games since Solskjaer took over, and lost only three. One of those, of course, came in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie against PSG, a 2-0 defeat, which deficit was dramatically overturned in the second leg with a 3-1 win.

Solskjaer’s side managed five total shots in Paris, three of which were goals, and the other two of which led to those goals. PSG, meanwhile, had 72 percent possession, 12 shots (six on target) and gifted United every single one of their decent chances, of which there were, again, only three.

Whether or not that result is what ultimately persuaded the United board to hire Solskjaer full-time, the tie was a tidy encapsulation of the debate that has raged around United’s new manager since he took the job: Is he lucky or good?

Solskjaer’s supporters have a strong case, which is that he’s won 14 of his 19 games in charge, got the team back in the hunt for a top four league finish and led them to the quarterfinals of the Champions League with the most improbable, Manchester United Way © tier comeback since Solskjaer’s own playing days.

Solskjaer’s detractors (skeptics may be a better word) also have a strong case, but as well as being strong it is extremely f**king nerdy and lame. The case is that while United’s performances have improved under Solskjaer, the underlying numbers suggest they haven’t improved quite as much as the top line numbers would have you believe.

Moreover, it’s reasonable to wonder whether this improvement was inevitable as soon as the club sacked Mourinho, who was so deep in his If I’m Going Down, I’m Taking You With Me playbook he had stopped even bothering to make excuses for benching Paul Pogba.

So while it’s obviously, undeniably true that Solskajer has made United a better team, there are also good reasons to doubt (1) whether he’ll be able to keep this going and (2) his capacity to respond when United inevitably hit a bad patch of form. Returning your best players to the starting XI isn’t a solution when they’re already starting.

But of course the big mitigating factor in all this analysis is that United are the biggest, richest team in England, and having appointed Solskjaer on a three-year deal, it seems likely they’ll spend vast quantities of money this summer on a lot of very talented players, particularly in defense (which, per both the underlying numbers and the fact 33-year-old Ashley Young is their starting right-back, is the area in which the team are least likely to maintain their current levels of performance).

Those signings could be enough to make up the gap between United’s results and their underlying performances. Then again, given the club’s transfer activity is overseen by a former investment banker whose much-publicized search for a Director of Football is at least a tacit admission he’s doing a bad job, they could also make things even worse, in both the short- and long-term.

All in all, then, Solskjaer is set to prove everyone right and wrong at the same time. If he succeeds, the good name of the analytics community will be dragged once more through the mud by everyone too angry to listen to what they’re actually saying. The people doing the dragging, meanwhile, will just be wrong. But they’ll also be right, because, you know, they thought hiring Solskjaer was a good idea.

If he fails, the stattos will be wrong because what they’re actually saying is Solskjaer has improved United, and they’ll be right because they’ve been preaching caution this entire time. The Ole’s At The Wheel Brigade, meanwhile, will be left to pick up the pieces when the Manchester United Way © is proven not to be an actual, viable tactical approach. But they’ll also be right because whenever and however things do go wrong, it will presumably be Ed Woodward’s fault.

Just like old times, then. Except now at least United are fun to watch.