He had not even made a decision on who was going to be his number one goalkeeper when the team reported back for pre-season, with Dean Henderson's struggles in recovering from Covid-19 eventually deciding it for him.
The final call on one player receiving treatment for an injury problem, for example, was left to director of football negotiations, Matt Judge, while there was a lack of communication between Solskjaer and the board over his plans for the summer and who would be free to leave the club on loan. GOAL has learned that players were not given explanations as to why they were being left out of the team, and Solskjaer found it difficult to make hard calls on big decisions. He is the sort of man who said goodbye to every member of staff at Old Trafford as he left, and stopped for selfies and autographs with fans even when the result had been terrible.īut that did him more harm than good in some ways, as it became clear that he did not like having the difficult conversations.
Solskjaer outlined with those players what his expectation would be in terms of their playing time over the season, only to then revert to his comfort blanket of 4-2-3-1, leaving those players who thought they could be in with a chance of forcing their way into the starting XI back on the bench. GOAL understands that during pre-season, United worked on a more attacking 4-4-2 diamond formation, as well as a 4-3-3 system, both of which gave hope of more minutes to fringe players such as Donny van de Beek and Jesse Lingard.