Cardiff fans will need some convincing - and you can't blam

What Manchester United fans can learn from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's chaotic and confused Cardiff City reign


Cardiff fans will need some convincing - and you can't blame the after the chaos they witnessed.


By Ian Mitchelmore



Wednesday 19th December 2018


Five years ago, pretty much to the day, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer breezed into Cardiff City as one of the bright new managerial hopes in European football.

Supposedly wanted by Aston Villa and admired in boardrooms across the continent, the Bluebirds reckoned they had pulled off a real coup.

Shine for a couple of years with Cardiff, so the theory went, and Solskjaer would end up at Manchester United as Sir Alex Ferguson's real heir apparent.

Well he's certainly ended up at Old Trafford alright, but in spite of, rather than because of, his crack at the Premier League with Cardiff.

Solsjkaer won just three of 18 games in charge of Cardiff, took them to rock-bottom in the table and down into the Championship.

He lasted just seven matches into the new campaign before Vincent Tan, who had backed Solskjaer with money and assembled what was dubbed 'the biggest and best squad in Championship history', lost patience and ruthlessly fired his manager.

How ironic that Solskjaer's first game in interim charge of Manchester United should be back at his old Cardiff City stomping ground.

He will probably be afforded a warm reception by Bluebirds supporters, as well as United, fans. But that won't change the opinion of some who rate him as amongst the very worst Cardiff managers of recent times.

They base their opinion upon the evidence of what was presented in front of their very eyes - a Solskjaer reign that ended in utter chaos, confusion and crass decision making (You can read our take on what happened here).

Five years on Bluebirds supporters can scarcely believe that Manchester United, perhaps the world's biggest football club, have turned to a Cardiff City flop in their hour of need. Fairly or unfairly, some are openly laughing about it.

It is up to Solskjaer, of course, to prove at Old Trafford he is nowhere near as bad a manager as his horrendous time with Cardiff suggested.

He will, of course, be working with much better players than the ones who were at his disposal in south Wales. That in itself is a good starting point. I mean, who can't get Paul Pogba to shine (Jose Mourinho aside, of course).

Solskjaer did do well in charge of United's reserve team, and as manager of Norwegian side Molde. He won the League with them pre-Cardiff. Post-Cardiff he topped a Europa League group with them which contained Ajax, Celtic and Fenerbache.

But, as Solskjaer discovered with the Bluebirds, managing Molde in Norway and taking charge of a Premier League team are galaxies apart.

Not to put too fine a point upon it, his Cardiff reign was simply chaotic. Solskjaer continually tinkered with his team and didn't appear to know his best line-up. Only once did he stick with the same starting X1 from game to game. No wonder there was little shape or pattern to Cardiff's team.

He picked players out of position, like midfield dog of war Aron Gunnarsson in the playmaking 10 role, and right-footed centre-back Matthew Connolly at left-back.

He brought in three Norwegians, Mats Daehli, Magnus Wolff Ekrem and Jo Inge Berget, who had no chance of coping with the demands of Premier League football, let alone a relegation fight.

Solskjaer likened Daehli to Manchester City maestro David Silva, a player who could run between the lines and torment opposition defences. In the end, he simply looked a player hopelessly out of his depth at this level.

The new manager had breezed into Cardiff pledging an adventurous, free-flowing brand of football to wow the fans. He wanted ball-playing centre-backs, which is why he signed Bruno Manga and Spaniard Juan Cala, and Old Trafford fans will certainly warm to that style after being bored by Jose Mourinho.

But Cardiff weren't suited to going gung-ho. That was best demonstrated by a 3-6 home thrashing by Liverpool, a kind of you score, we'll score approach to the 90 minutes. Needless to say it suited Luiz Suarez and the other Anfield superstars far better than it did the Bluebirds.

There were positives, home wins over Norwich and Fulham and a smash and grab 1-0 away triumph at Southampton.

That unexpected result down on the south coast gave Cardiff fans hope Solskjaer could actually keep them up. The bubble was immediately burst as they lamentably lost 3-0 at Newcastle and 4-0 at Sunderland.

The Cardiff team against Sunderland resembled Mourinho's last stand at Liverpool at the weekend - lopsided, hopelessly outplayed, outfought and with players who seemed to lack belief in the tactics being adopted.

There were other horror shows, 0-4 v Hull, 0-3 against Crystal Palace and, worst of the lot, a 0-3 loss against arch-rivals Swansea when Solskjaer's team didn't appear to grasp the magnitude of what the Welsh derby truly meant to the people.

There was simply no consistency. Not of the positive sort, anyhow.

Despite going down Cardiff stuck by their man and Tan sanctioned a huge Championship spending spree that summer.

Solskjaer had to deliver from the off. Seven games into the new season, following back to back home losses against Norwich and Middlesbrough, he was toast.

His team were booed off in his final game, fans believing the side were as lacking in shape and pattern in that game as they had been at the beginning of the Solskjaer reign. Instead of free-flowing pass and move football, Cardiff had resorted to route one lump it up to Kenwyne Jones.

You just sensed that wasn't the real Solskjaer. He was the manager who brought Brazilian stardust to the Welsh capital in the shape of Fabio, a swashbuckling right-back whose surges down the right marked him down as a fans' favourite.

He also brought in Manga and skipper Sean Morrison, key figures in the side's promotion under Neil Warnock. So it wasn't totally bad.

But during his time with Cardiff, Solskjaer provided little evidence to suggest he was up to the task of managing the biggest club in the world.

Manage them he will though, against Cardiff on Saturday evening.

After years of staid football under the former Special One, Man Utd fans will relish the more dynamic approach Solskjaer will bring to the party.

He will play the Manchester United way... and this time he might, just might, succeed because he has superior players at his disposal.

Vincent Tan apart, Cardiff's hierarchy have never believed Solskjaer was as bad an appointment as results suggested.

He was nonetheless a desperate disappointment. This is his opportunity to exorcise that ghost.

Cardiff fans will need some convincing - and you can't blame the after the chaos they witnessed.

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Absolutely disastrous Manager for us..it was shameful the way we capitulated in the last 4/5 weeks of our Premier League season..we didn’t just lose but we were hammered by average teams in them last few weeks

He was then given a massive budget to get us promoted from the Championship, but only succeeded in signing overpaid and quite frankly useless players like Macheda, Dikacho, Le Fondre, Berget etc etc

Completely out of his depth and it’s a sign of the disarray Man Utd are in to give the interim job to OGS

Absolutely disastrous Manager for us..it was shameful the way we capitulated in the last 4/5 weeks of our Premier League season..we didn’t just lose but we were hammered by average teams in them last few weeks

He was then given a massive budget to get us promoted from the Championship, but only succeeded in signing overpaid and quite frankly useless players like Macheda, Dikacho, Le Fondre, Berget etc etc

Completely out of his depth and it’s a sign of the disarray Man Utd are in to give the interim job to OGS

He is absolutely hopeless, he took us back about five years, luckily Warnock took us forward two or three years.

Player power got Mourinho the sack, and I think they will rally around OGS in an attempt to prove it was Mourinho's fault, just like Chelsea players do when they get their managers sacked.

So although he is crap they will probably improve as a team, but I would say it will be despite him rather than because of him.

Good article which clearly illustrates the chaos and destruction Ole caused.

It’s why I will always stick up for Russell Slade. I honestly think Slade was the most important managerial appointment in our clubs history. Slade stabilised our club, steered us away from the relegation zone and kept us competitive in the Championship with one arm tied behind his back with all the cut backs he was brought in to make.

I will never understand why fans couldn’t appreciate the job Slade did to save our club from plummeting down the leagues. I thought the amount of unwarranted criticism Slade received was a disgrace.

solksjaer could have been a good appointment, his problem was very lazy recruitment (signing man u reserves, norweigan players), and constant chopping and changing. he was chucked into a relegation battle and decided to change the way we played, whilst signing inferior players to do so. we went from being a solid, unfashionable side who picked up points, to an open side that looked like relegation candidates.

for a player of his big reputation, he looked like someone who was either out of his depth, or at totally the wrong club at the wrong time. maybe his approach would have worked at a more stable club with a higher budget, but in my view, probably not. his expensively assembled team was a shadow of the one warnock put together on a fraction of the budget.

that said, in many ways the united job is an easier one than the one he took here. there it is just a case of motivating highly capable players who have effectively been on strike under mourinho. any half decent manager should be able to improve their situation.

I wonder which Norwegian and ex Man U players he will sign..

Slades brand of football sent me to sleep and made me question why I even bothered to attend games, apart from that I thought he was a wonderful appointment.

Good article which clearly illustrates the chaos and destruction Ole caused.

It’s why I will always stick up for Russell Slade. I honestly think Slade was the most important managerial appointment in our clubs history. Slade stabilised our club, steered us away from the relegation zone and kept us competitive in the Championship with one arm tied behind his back with all the cut backs he was brought in to make.

I will never understand why fans couldn’t appreciate the job Slade did to save our club from plummeting down the leagues. I thought the amount of unwarranted criticism Slade received was a disgrace.

I actually appreciate the job Slade did and the extreme limitations he had.

It was his press conferences that were infuriating, trying to say a match was exciting and completely different to what we as fans witnessed.

A bit of honesty goes a long way and if he said it's just about results and staying competitive with what we had I would have sympathised, but I felt he was too self-promoting when it came to his assessment of matches

Good article which clearly illustrates the chaos and destruction Ole caused.

It’s why I will always stick up for Russell Slade. I honestly think Slade was the most important managerial appointment in our clubs history. Slade stabilised our club, steered us away from the relegation zone and kept us competitive in the Championship with one arm tied behind his back with all the cut backs he was brought in to make.

I will never understand why fans couldn’t appreciate the job Slade did to save our club from plummeting down the leagues. I thought the amount of unwarranted criticism Slade received was a disgrace.

he saved us from plumetting down the leagues ffs we were 14th { were higher than eventual champions Bournemouth and higher than Villa at the same point this season } had won our last home game and had two credable draws at Brighton and Derby , lost 3 games prior to his arrival all to teams that ended up on 78pts or more { put into context, 78 points is more than Boro and Derby got last season } with a squad that contained 7/8 internationals and 9/10 players who had won promotion 15 months earlier.

he emptied our stadium with his football but worse of all he was a compulsive liar and fantasist who somehow had watched a totally different game to both pundits and our fans on a twice weekly basis..sorry but NO

Good article which clearly illustrates the chaos and destruction Ole caused.

It’s why I will always stick up for Russell Slade. I honestly think Slade was the most important managerial appointment in our clubs history. Slade stabilised our club, steered us away from the relegation zone and kept us competitive in the Championship with one arm tied behind his back with all the cut backs he was brought in to make.

I will never understand why fans couldn’t appreciate the job Slade did to save our club from plummeting down the leagues. I thought the amount of unwarranted criticism Slade received was a disgrace.

he saved us from plumetting down the leagues ffs we were 14th { were higher than eventual champions Bournemouth and higher than Villa at the same point this season } had won our last home game and had two credable draws at Brighton and Derby , lost 3 games prior to his arrival all to teams that ended up on 78pts or more { put into context, 78 points is more than Boro and Derby got last season } with a squad that contained 7/8 internationals and 9/10 players who had won promotion 15 months earlier.

he emptied our stadium with his football but worse of all he was a compulsive liar and fantasist who somehow had watched a totally different game to both pundits and our fans on a twice weekly basis..sorry but NO

I was enjoying that...until the last paragraph/sentence

Russell Slade took the Cardiff job mainly because it was, uhm, a job. Can't fault him for that and we should remember that, according to the owner, he came highly recommended for the job he was asked to do; but I think he knew to came at personal cost, i.e. he was to have both hands tied behind his back at all times and had to toe the party line

Under the circumstances, Russell slid did a decent job for City under testing circumstances and with little or no room to manoeuvre in the transfer market, as the club was effectively at civil war with itself and its own fan base

The reasons for that are too complex (and debatable) for one post but Russell Slade was not the catalyst for the club's relative decline at that particular point in time. That (decline) had already begun during the latter Malky era and was exacerbated under the naive and mis-spending OGS period

Whilst I agree that the football under Russell Slade left a lot to be desired and it could be argued he helped a lot of part-time supporters to find an excuse not to attend the CCS, on reflection he actually made a purse out of a sow's ear at the time and at least kept us in the Championship before the real disaster that was (the aptly named) Paul Trollope and then the inspired decision to employ a manager in Neil Warnock that was the perfect fit at the perfect time

Thankfully, it's all worked out for us in the end!

Slade has never won anything and I believe has been sacked a few more times since we sacked him