Paul Parker: Manchester United need more from Paul Pogba

There’s definitely ability with Pogba but if you want to be seen as the best you have to show consistency. You can’t pick and choose when you want to play games of football because somewhere along the line it’ll come back and bite you.

Now he didn’t perform under Jose Mourinho and everyone saw the problems with the former United boss as a person and as a man manager. When you’ve got someone who comes in and puts their arm around you and puts to bed the situation before, you can’t be letting them down and, more importantly, you can’t be letting your team-mates down.

If you want to be seen or talked about or someone who’s maybe going to play for Real Madrid, they are not going to accept performances like that against Barcelona - and an attitude like that.

Now that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has become the manager, I think a lot more players know where they stand with the club. I think the vast majority know what future they will have - for good or bad. That happens. Mentally, a lot of them are just shutting down and that’s football. That’s what’s happening now. They’re realising they’re not wanted any more and it’s human nature.

It’s a different situation to Mourinho in that he forced the issue on them by his manner. That’s a situation Ole has to man manage for the remaining games of the season, which makes it a very difficult job for him.

We have to look at it realistically that nobody really fancied United to win the tie. There was always a lot of talk about PSG and what they achieved there, but the difference between PSG and Barcelona is that the Spanish giants have more experience and they have more match-winners. They have the best match-winner in the world in Lionel Messi.

It might not be the best Barcelona team we’ve seen in a while but I think we might have to say they are two levels above United.

United haven’t had a decent right-back since Gary Neville retired, and I’ve always said that the club have got a problem when they’re putting old wingers at full-back. It just doesn’t fill a gap. It doesn’t show the intention of what you want to achieve. Ashley Young can’t help the fact that he’s playing there. Somewhere down the line it was always going to come out in the wash that he’s not good enough for that position - and it’s come out at the worst possible time when United were playing very poorly.

It’s easy to pick on that individual because everyone knows his weaknesses. United have got two right-backs there – one in Matteo Darmian and one in Diogo Dalot – they should trust in them to play in those positions and say, ‘right, you’ve come as a right-back, go and prove you’re a right-back’. When I’ve seen Dalot play at right-back for United he hasn’t looked assured, but he might need time to play in that position.

I think you have to look at buying maybe three defenders, two midfield players and even a centre-forward. You would fit Marcus Rashford into that front line, but Solskjaer needs more.

---

I’m still going with Manchester City because I look at the way they play the game and, for me, they’re the most consistent team in the Premier League.

Everybody would love to play in that manner in the sense that they’ve got midfield players who can close down and work hard, and they’ve got midfield players who can play football in any area of the pitch.

They’ve got defenders who want to play and they’ve got a centre-forward and a wide left player in Leroy Sane who can make goals and score goals. Sane is the one who can win them the title, he just needs to be playing regularly.