The immediate concern for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is not who Manchester United should buy to rebuild the club. It is who they sell.

There would be one name on the top of my list. Paul Pogba.

If Real Madrid have £100 million and Zinedine Zidane wants him, United can solve the first of many problems as their long reconstruction gets underway.

Since Solskjaer took over at Old Trafford he has never hidden how inspired he is by his mentor, Sir Alex Ferguson. He would be wise to ask himself, “What would Sir Alex do with Pogba?”

The history lesson is there. Solskjaer faces the greatest challenge of any United manager since Ferguson’s appointment in the mid-80s, when he assessed a talented, underperforming squad and made ruthless, sometimes unpopular decisions for the greater good.