United losing to Barca is no clue to Solskjaer's long-term success

There are various things in life that we trust are forever: love, God and such – but only one thing that definitely is forever: a football club. So we should not be surprised how much of our identity it represents, linking us to our ancestors and descendants while offering excitement and drama otherwise out of reach; nor how seriously we take it, taking football seriously being marginally less humiliating than taking oneself seriously.

In the process, we merge the values our club purports to represent with those we profess to possess - and with good reason. It is difficult to be strong, to attack life with flair, to show attitude under pressure; it is difficult to win. So it makes perfect sense that we rely on our team to do it for us ... except they’re not doing it for us, we’re all doing it together because we and they are indivisible.

As players and managers come and go, particular qualities become rooted in individuals, ascribed the status of “legends”, “heroes”, and “cult heroes”. At Manchester United, the iconography is almost another sport of its own, and yet few can rival the unblemished reputation of Ole Gunnar Solskjær who, tomorrow tonight, leads the club into a Champions League tie with Barcelona as the club’s permanent manager.

Solskjær’s appointment as caretaker manager made perfect sense. After the enervating reigns of David Moyes and Louis van Gaal, followed by the special misery of the Special One, the club needed someone who cherishes it as part of themselves to reacquaint it with what it’s meant to be.

Except: there was a lot more to it than that. In two spells managing Molde, Solskjær had twice done brilliantly, basing all his work on what he learnt when playing for United - he had, he said, spent six years practicing for the job in the ludicrous hope that it might come his way, a claim supported by his recall of matches during that period. It is true that he failed badly at Cardiff in between times, but attempting to impose football, mid-season, on Malky Mackay’s bunch of farmers, carpenters and blacksmiths, though a major error, did not reveal inherent unsuitability for a position that poses different challenges. I am certain I can drive my Ford Focus jalopy better than Lewis Hamilton; his Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, less so.

Ed Woodward, United’s managing director, is justifiably revered for his footballing expertise, but it is hard to see him finding the time to follow Norway’s Eliteserien; it is not much of a leap to imagine a certain board member, keen on Solskjær, influence, and “back with renewed vigour” after serious illness, keeping him up to date. Either way, Solskjær is an intelligent man who spent over a decade experiencing one of the greatest managers of all-time, and while this offers absolutely no guarantee of future success, many journeys to excellence begin with an excellent teacher.

During his playing career, Solskjær was famously fastidious in identifying his opponents’ weaknesses from the bench, but just as significant is his passage through it. He began his career as a poacher, forming successful partnerships with players as different as Eric Cantona, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Teddy Sheringham and Ruud van Nistelrooy, became comfortable on either wing and developed into a complete centre-forward. Then, when he came back shot after three years out injured, he still found a way to score 11 goals in 32 appearances, only 15 of which were starts. None of this is possible without a profound appreciation of the game.

Except: there was a lot more to it than that. As a man, Solskjær is exactly what United needed, a talented communicator who radiates happiness and not in a cloying way; he just gets life. He is not, as the cliché goes, someone for whom no-one has a bad word, rather someone for whom everyone has only rhapsodic words – and yes, it is embarrassing to write all that, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Bejaysus, even Roy Keane likes him.

Because of this, Solskjær is one of those people for whom things just happen for him. He scored six minutes into his United debut – a rebound from his own miss; scored the goal that won the treble; and coming back from injury, was presented with an easy chance immediately after missing an easy chance, right in front of United’s away support. To invert Ian Holloway’s aphorism, if Ole Gunnar Solskjær fell into a barrel of thumbs, he’d come up sucking a boob.

But you don’t have the career Solskjær had, survive the dressing rooms he inhabited, and deliver as he did, when he did, without epochal mental strength and a sophisticated nasty streak; “How much?”, he wondered, when record-signing Rio Ferdinand misplaced a pass during his first training session at United. It will be a brave idiot who takes him on.

Immediately after he turned up at Old Trafford, Solskjær set about bringing all these aspects together, a man determined to enjoy the opportunity of his life, and where his predecessors shrunk, he attacked. In his first interview after getting the job, he noted that "Every time you meet new people you're excited,” and it is this feeling, more than any other, that has taken United from a hiding at Anfield to a quarter-final against Barcelona. Football is meant to be exciting, United are meant to be exciting, life is meant to be exciting.

The crux of his strategy was also revealed that day, and given how simple he makes life, it is no surprise that football receives similar treatment. “It's not about the opposition, it's about us,” he said. It's about Man United, it's about our players knowing what they can do, about our players expressing themselves. So our main focus will be on us, how I want us to play.”

This would become a motif: reassurance and fait accompli exceptionalism, but always with a challenge: live up to your surroundings, and live up to yourself. Culture creates expectation creates culture creates expectation, so to help build the right environment, Solskjær retained the coaching services of Michael Carrick and Kieran McKenna while adding Micky Phelan and Mark Dempsey, both of whom served under Fergie, and understood the importance of a family atmosphere extending beyond the team to encompass every member of staff.

In their first game under the new regime, United thrashed Cardiff; after it, Solskjær crushed so much positivity into 30 seconds as to be almost indecent. “They are the best fans in the world, we all know that,” he said about the support bestowed upon him, before stating his next step: “Go through a few video clips of things we can do a little bit better but emphasise all the good things they’ve done today.”

Then, before the next game, more of the same: “When we get one goal then we want to get two, and when we get two then we want to get three. That’s the nature of this club: you always go and attack.” Which they did, beating Huddersfield 3-1, with Paul Pogba – restored to centre-stage – scoring two jazzers.

The mood of his squad sorted, Solskjær moved onto mindset – the wins were welcome, but also reflected the talent imbalance between United and their opponents. To beat better ones, more would be required. “You can't tell all the players what to do in this position or that position," he said. "They're here for a reason, they're good players and it's up to them to use their imagination, creativity and just enjoy playing for this club because that's the best time of your life.”

This not only marked a break with the shut up and do what I say nature of his predecessors, but was the best way to talk to a young, fragile squad; though, these days, Solskjær is less Babyfaced Assassin, more Babyfaced Hilda Ogden, he retains the same relentless positivity and enthusiasm for what football should be.

And he had specific words for Marcus Rashford, quickly installed as the centre-forward Mourinho insisted he could never be, never mind already was. “I'm going to work with him on his finishing,” Solskjær said. “He's just got to calm down a little bit. He's got a great strike from outside the box and inside the box we'll just keep on working on being cool and calm and pass it past the keeper." Rashford, meanwhile, tweeted a picture of him and Solskjær talking, alongside a mortar board emoji – the difference between a manager who wants him to be good, not to prove a point, and the difference between a manager who was a top player and one who wasn’t.

Sure enough, Rashford was brilliant against Bournemouth before seeing off Newcastle with a finish that could only be described as Solskjærian. “Having those words around you makes a difference,” he said afterwards.

But it wasn’t all nicey-nicey. The training was made as physical and competitive as possible, practice matches coming with injury-time and winning goals. David Horrocks, an elite performance researcher and china of Phelan, was invited along to watch. “At least ten players,” he said, “plus those who were either injured or forced to sit out due to their last match exertions were not only voluntarily watching they were there cheering every touch, every attack, and quite literally demanding both quality and entertainment from their peers. And believe me it was being delivered in abundance.”

So United’s run of wins continued. They were poor against Reading in the FA Cup – in public Solskjær blamed himself, but explained things differently in private – then moved onto his first big game against Spurs. Though he had preached implacable confidence in his own players, he knew that they were not good enough to beat a better team on their own terms, altering tactics and to directly precipitate a fine first-half goal. “We believe blindly in what the manager and his assistants are transmitting to us,” gushed Ander Herrera afterwards – then, in the second, United’s substandard midfield left them reliant on the brilliance of David de Gea and the profligacy of the opposition to record a sixth successive win.

Rather than bask in the glow, the coaching team noticed. After Brighton were beaten, United went to Arsenal in the Cup – “Fantastic. We need these games,” gushed Solskjær after the draw – and now, the team had a structure, defending the box properly and playing through midfield periodically. And, of course, they were handy on the counter, their mood primed by watching tapes of past United teams – some featuring their manager – doing the same thing. The message, constantly, is their place within a tradition and on a continuum that means something; that is bigger than they are. It may well be a load of bollocks, but if people believe in it anyway, it doesn’t actually matter.

Even when Solskjær made his first big error, taking liberties with his selection for Burnley at home, he still contrived to come up smelling of roses; after United went 0-2 down, they roared back in the old style to snatch a draw. Then, weeks later, Andreas Pereira – whose error cost the first goal that night – was instrumental in a win over Southampton, when had he done similar under Mourinho, he’d still be in the gulag eating teeth borscht.

Meanwhile in the stands, delight was palpable. In the first instance, there was relief that the Mourhino misery was over, coupled with the unexpected joy of seeing a hero return. But as the team continued to win and as Solskjær continued to nail his every utterance, it swelled into something more, a virtuous circle-jerk of family, community and identity - not enough on its own, but powerful stuff nonetheless. United were United again. “It seems like our fans enjoy the away games,” he said after Chelsea were beaten in the Cup. “It was a fantastic performance by them tonight.”

By then, United trailed Paris Saint-Germain 2-0 from the first leg of their Champions League tie, minor managerial errors magnified by quality opposition and untimely injuries. Quickly, this snowballed into a crisis – in Solskjær’s opinion, partly because of how hard he’d worked the players. “Do you wait until pre-season and think you will change results by just not asking them to run,” he said, “or do we start now and show them what the demands of intensity are and how we want to play? You have seen what I have chosen. I have chosen that we need to play as a Man United team, and if you want to be a part of Man United, it’s a survival of the fittest, isn’t it?”

His refusal to gripe not only showed confidence in his squad but in himself – he was playing the long game because it was the right thing to do, and because he backed himself to still be there at the end of it. Sure enough, United eked out a goalless draw with Liverpool, then won at Crystal Palace - “Just one of those pleasing nights”, apparently – and came from behind to beat Southampton. In all three games, results were influenced from the bench by clever changes of formation and personnel.

Solskjær was equally upbeat before the European return. “Mountains are there to be climbed,” he insisted before it; “That’s what we do,” he surmised after it, a tactical plan tailored and executed to perfection forcing an unprecedented result.

Subsequently, things have not gone as well. After doing so well when players were out, in true Fergie style, Solskjær overdid it rushing them back and United lost first to Arsenal, then to Wolves – saving them from cup final derby defeat, clever Ole – before he was given the job permanently. United then sneaked past Watford before losing to Wolves again, a fall that those watching the xG will tell you was always likely, the team simply regressing to the mean. On the other hand, those watching the games will tell you that of all the early wins, the only one in serious jeopardy was Spurs; that Wolves are a grooved, confident side whose slow, possession-heavy style is a bad match-up for United; the only defeat for which Solskjær was culpable was in the cup, where he picked the wrong team and acted too slowly to remedy it; that, if you miss the chances they missed in the league games at Molineux and Emirates, in which they “won” the xG you’ll have a problem; and that this issue relates to the players, not a manager yet to buy reinforcements.

Which is to say that United were not beaten by data but by reality: they lack killers and a bit of class, the kind of players who bend games to their personality and play well nearly every week. United are not a championship-winning team, so only a simpleton would expect them to sustain championship form, then blame the manager who inspired it when they do not; likewise, if they lose to Barcelona we will be none the wiser as to Solskjær’s long-term suitability. He is learning, and it is only because of him that the tie is even happening.

Of course, the chances are that things probably won’t work out. The Glazers are interested in money not glory, so might fund a top-four push but have little reason to speculate beyond that. And managing Manchester United is a phenomenally difficult job beyond almost everyone in the world and not one person in the world offers guaranteed success - there are questions about Mauricio Pochettino’s transfer dealings and big-game contributions; about how Max Allegri would fare in a competitive league; and even Pep Guardiola has yet to succeed without inheriting a phenomenally talented squad, sovereign wealth, or both. So what are the chances that an on-pitch hero, who does not have Cristiano Ronaldo and Sergio Ramos running his dressing room, will turn out to be a managerial genius as well? Things that seem too good to be true usually are too good to be true.

In the short term, Solskjær’s success will be contingent upon his success in the transfer market. He will not be given money to buy everything that he needs, and will have little scope for error: can he find two midfielders, not unlike various of his former team-mates, who can reliably control a game, and at least one of whom is perpetually bombed out of their box on competitive mania? Then, in the medium term, he’ll need to coach and cajole the decorative elements already in place into substantial ones, and in the long term, bring through an exceptional cohort of young players. It’s a big job, but not an impossible one.

When Barcelona appointed Pep Guardiola, he'd done very little to earn the job, and had he gone to Getafe or Cadiz, who knows what would've happened – footballing genius or not, no manager is suited to every position. But sometimes the right bloke is in the right place at the right time and, though there are compelling reasons as to why Solskjær will fail, plenty else suggests that he might just succeed. So far, he has shown tactical acumen, big-game temperament and inspirational capacity, personifying the kindness, attitude and joy that characterises Manchester and Manchester United. He earnt the job of United manager by ... managing United, and no other candidate can say that, nor supply credentials to override it. And, if it fails – well there’s always Paul Ince.