Is Ole The Man?
Wednesday 26th May: The Europa League final. I sit back flustered and slightly inebriated, my back pressing against the cool couch on the ground floor of the Peacock Bar, North Parade. It’s been an evening of mixed drinks and mixed emotions that has suddenly, out of nowhere, taken its toll.
The game has gone the distance at one goal a piece, and United are currently playing out the first half of extra time. The coach— Ole Gunnar Solskjær makes a brief cameo on the screen, my childhood hero now reduced to a greying Gollum hidden away in the dugout. The extent of his tactical intuition — a substitution, which sees wonderkid Mason Greenwood make way for the farcical Federico Fred. It’s the kind of genius thinking that brought us the clip-on ponytail and the carpeted toilet seat.
His opponent Unai Emery, a figure that strikes an uncanny resemblance to the late Count Dracula, stands on the touchline suspiciously surrounded by a swarm of bats. His impressive track record in the tournament and his experience at this level is evident and he’s made his substitutions count. The fanged man’s squad definitely looks the more energetic of the two sides and he knows it, as he strokes his heinous hairline that recedes with United’s hopes of ending a four year hurt.
Extra time plays out but ultimately it will be a penalty shoot-out to decide the game. My thoughts swim through the several litres of gin that the past half hour of football has justified as the bars inhabitants catch wind of the imminent shootout. Excited whispers spread like butter on bread as onlookers begin to gather and watch from the banister above. A stadium of strangers surround me and we watch on together as the penalties ensue.
It is a relentless shootout which folllows, seeing twenty-one perfect penalties split 11–10 in favour of Villarreal, and now the goalkeeper David De Gea must step forward to take his penalty. Echoes of Moscow, Van Der Sar the hero, Would the tarnished tabloid target spill his beans, or was he about to bust a mega footballin’ nut in the faces of all his haters?
The seasoned Spaniard steps up, the weight of a thousand goalkeeper gloves stacked on each shoulder. He takes aim and delivers a feeble shot with about as much oumph as a quiet keff on a peak time train, easily wafted away by goalkeeper Gerónimo Rulli, and just like that they he had done it. Emery had done it. With every garlic hating bone in his body… he had done it. The vampyric villain of Villarreal, our old adversary at Arsenal swoops onto the pitch having successfully sucked the life out of my night, destroying all prospects of a potential party. The boos, the hisses, the rotten fruit, hit me in a onslaught of taunts and abuse, we had fallen at the last hurdle. I flee to reflect alone, beaten and ashamed.
It was a sour ending to what could have been considered a reasonably successful campaign. Second place sort of felt like progress considering United’s shaky start. At the beginning of the season there seemed more chance of Harry Kane spitting a tongue twister with a red lolly in one ear and a yellow lolly in the other, than United finishing runners up.
But how far had we really come? In 2017 under the ever joyful José, the red devils closed the campaign with a Europa League as well as a League Cup trophy, along with a second place finish to a far superior Manchester City side (not much had changed in that regard).
So what had changed? Had the squad improved? There’s enough evidence to suggest so, with the arrival of Bruno Fernandes, Edinson Cavani, and the development of Mason Greenwood, as well as a handful of other players. But regardless, there was still that all familiar persistence with players and partnerships that just didn’t seem to work if United were to compete again at the highest level.
Let’s start with Mctominay and Fred, a midfield partnership with as much likability as Fred and Rose West. Both seem to have an inability to play dangerous forward passes as they sit deep, allowing large voids to open in the centre of the park. All the while Pogba is pushed out to the wing or even left on the bench. Paul Pogba, a man that once, at the order of ex prime minister David Cameron, sent a longball hurling into space to destroy an asteroid heading straight for Doncaster Dome. A national treasure, our French maestro.
But let’s get back to this double pivot commanded by the magisterial McFred. They seem as a whole to be utilised by Ole largely as a means to cover the frailties at the back. Despite Manchester United accumulating a total of thirteen clean sheets in the 20/21 Premier League season (the fourth highest team in the division), there is still issues to be discussed regarding the defence.
When watching United captain Harry Maguire and fellow centre-back partner Victor Lindelöf link up, the clean sheet gloss begins to slowly chip away. Lindelöf’s weakness from set pieces (with a particular focus on aerial duels) leaves a lot to be desired. A lack of real pace has left the fan base crying out for a fast centre-back replacement to be brought in as a new defensive partner for Maguire, to make up for some of the England international’s shortcomings.
But alas we chase signings that should have been made last season, with Jadon Sancho the top of the target list, a gesture perhaps by the Glazers to bring in a shirt selling star in hope that we forget about the sixteen years of fan dodging, as well as going off in secret to form a completely new league.
But despite the shitshow up top that seems to leak through the club’s hierachy the way a diarrohea flooded bathroom wreaks havoc on the flat below, there is still belief in Solskjær to come good. Some faith that he will begin to pull off the tactical masterclasses that we associate with the likes of Klopp, Pep and more recently Tuchel.
“Ole’s the man!”
“Give him time.”
But is he the man… and how much time?
***
The weeks that follow the final only serve to salt the wounds. I hide away isolated from a society that has turned its back on me, a second place sucker with a forgotten legacy.
I sit alone in my attic, missing person fliers decorate the street in which I reside in secret, my family weep for my return. I sit perusing Prime, flicking through the endless library of ‘things you’ve seen recently’ and ‘things you don’t fancy’, when I notice Alex Ferguson’s new flick — Never Give in.
Never… Give…. In? I have a Vietnam-esque flashback. Fireworks explode in Barcelona, a sea of red soldiers storm the city… cha-cha-champions of Europe? I flip on to my back frothing at the mouth, my body fitting, as Sir Alex’s life plays before me from the cobwebbed corner of my loft.
A working class warrior, our Scottish savior. A man who against all odds upset the Celtic and Rangers apple cart. Catholic and Protestants brought down by a Protestant man who loved a Catholic woman, “love conquers all", Ian Gillan of Deep Purple whispers from the back corners of my mind. And then like the way things move in fast movies, his legacy played before my eyes — the double, the double double, the treble, the BIRTH OF GARY NEVILLE, My mind is overtaken with passion.
“Truuuuust the proooooocess son”, A 5 dimensional Fergie bursts out of the television in an overpowering kaleidoscope of unimaginable colours. The 99 Final, the Man United DNA, Ole our hero at the death. His thoughts travel through my own and in that moment we are one.
I forget my doubts, for the Lord has spoken to me. I call my mother, the handset shakes with her screams of elation and relief at my safety. Her questions though are drowned out by one solitary statement followed by a question, a question that will ring through the ages, I hush my mother’s crying wails and I whisper, I whisper as clear as day.
“Mother.”
“Y-yes s-son?”
She whimpers, and I reply as calmly as a woozy weedhead at Woodstock.
“Mother…”
I take a deep breath and release the forbidden words that have been trapped behind tight lips, words that I would have never whispered in my darkest hours before I saw the light.
“Ole’s…”
“Wh-what son?! OLIVER WHO?!”
My mother screams in panicked confusion but I speak calmly over her bewildered ranting.
“He’s at the wheel mother… Ole’s at the wheel, tell me… tell me how good does it feel?”
I hang up before she has a chance to answer for I am enlightened. I am Awakened. I have been reborn. I lift myself onto my feet and climb down my attic stairs to prepare myself for the season ahead, there’s a lot of work to do and I should probably catch up on the Euros to be fair.