Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher says Manchester United will not win a Premier League title or Champions League for as long as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is in charge.
Meanwhile in the studio, his Sky Sports colleague Gary Neville refused to ‘call out’ his former Manchester United team-mate despite mounting pressure after a run of questionable results and performances.
Carragher gave his view that United will not win a league or European title under Solskjaer and that even if they win a less prestigious trophy this season, the club should move on with a new manager.
“Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has done a really good job as Manchester United manager — and I’m not saying that trying to be clever from a Liverpool point of view,” Carragher said on Monday Night Football.
“What I mean by that is this could have gone horribly wrong for Manchester United. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has come in with experience from Scandinavia and a year at Cardiff. I said this about Frank Lampard: I can’t judge Ole Gunnar Solskjaer against, maybe, [Jose] Mourinho or [Louis] van Gaal, who possibly did average jobs themselves.
“But this will never change: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will not win a league title or Champions League trophy as Manchester United manager. He is not at the level of the other managers — in terms of Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel or Pep Guardiola. They’ve got years of experience behind them in terms of winning big trophies. Ole hasn’t got that. So, where he’s gotten them right now — he’s done a really good job.
“But this team is a good team. I don’t believe it’s a poor team. I think it’s a great collection of individuals; but — there’s a feeling around that, ‘If Ole wins a trophy this season, he needs to stay; he needs to win a trophy to stay in the job.’
“Manchester United will only win maybe the FA Cup or the Europa League. If he won one of them, for me, that would make no difference. I wouldn’t be thinking at all about changing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer right now but Manchester United, at the end of the season, whether Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has won a trophy or not, need to have a better manager. That’s not a criticism of Ole — but they need a manager who can compete with the other managers in this league. And Solskjaer, unfortunately — and he’ll know that himself, and every Man United fan will know that themselves — is not at the level of the other [top] managers in the Premier League.”
🗣 "Ole will not win a league title or Champions League as Man United manager, he's not at the level of the other managers."@Carra23 says that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has done a good job at Manchester United but feels he can't compete with the other top managers pic.twitter.com/VC2AhMIxk2
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) October 18, 2021
Footage above courtesy of Sky Sports.
Carragher has always been more critical of Solskjaer than, say, Neville and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why that is the case.
The problem for Solskjaer is it’s becoming harder to defend him with poor results.
United play Atalanta in the Champions League on Wednesday night and Liverpool in the league on Sunday. We need to be talking about two wins on the bounce next Monday morning.
Infant Mgr OGS is not keen on Champions League but has his eagle eye on Championship League Trophy but first has to work very hard to ensure that United are relegated at the end of this season to have any chance of winning it next year.