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When Manchester United charged Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with restoring past time, England’s grandest football club had different times in mind.

Seven defeats in nine: the club’s worst run of results since October 1962. Twelve matches without a clean sheet: their worst sequence since August 1971.

On Wednesday evening a Manchester City side pursuing the English Premier League’s first back-to-back title in a decade underlined United’s infirmity in painfully comprehensive victory at Old Trafford.

Solskjaer - who oft appears most accomplished as a manager when talking about Sir Alex Ferguson and “the Manchester United way” - set the team up in a wingerless 5-3-1-1, stuck with his failing back five for all but the last seven minutes at 2-0 down, and was rewarded with just a single shot on target all night. This was one tactic you can be sure had not been borrowed from “the Gaffer’s” playbook.

(Image: Getty Images)

United ended the night sixth in the Premier League, three points off fourth. If Solskjaer doesn’t halt the main-artery bleeding soon United will be absent from Europe’s most important club competition for the third time in six post-Ferguson era attempts.

If none of this makes anyone at United look clever there is no question where the greatest incompetence lies. Ed Woodward has signed off on every major decision since his elevation to executive vice-chairman in 2013, Ferguson’s retirement year. The Glazer family selected their man Woodward to replace David Gill that summer, then allowed the former chartered accountant to spend unprecedented sums reshaping United’s football department into one blatantly unfit for purpose.

As one wag said of an unfounded rumour that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had bid to buy out the Glazers this week: “Manchester United don’t need Bezos. The Glazers already deliver everything to the neighbours.”

That Solskjaer is currently their coach, upgraded from caretaker to “full-time manager on a three-year contract” one month ago, is symptomatic of Woodward-Glazer decision making. His mid-December appointment was a smart PR move, trading on Solskjaer’s immense popularity as a Champions League Final winning “club legend [who] lives and breathes the culture here”. Far less intelligent, however, was their decision to hand over a long-term contract eight weeks before season’s end.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

The Norwegian had begun with brilliance, leading United to 10 wins in his first 11 matches in charge, yet the 46-year-old’s greatest attraction to the board lay elsewhere. His “2OLEGEND” rapport with a disgruntled and fractious support. His cost, a small fraction of the sum required to extract Mauricio Pochettino from Tottenham. His up-beat public assurances that the current squad was comprised of “a great bunch of players and their quality is unbelievable”. And his pliability: a caretaker elevated to long-term manager would not demand as much transfer-market investment as an elite appointee.

Solskjaer’s nine-year managerial CV is mediocre. Molde, relegation and the sack inside 10 months at Cardiff City, then Molde again is not the usual stuff of United managers.

He was placed in charge of a deeply dysfunctional football club because of his playing career there, and it is that playing career that insulates him from the criticism such recent rank underperformance would have brought to any other manager.

As my Transfer Window colleague Ian McGarry pointed out on the latest edition of our tri-weekly podcast, Solskjaer has been protected by an omerta of former team-mates who hold prominent positions in television, radio and print media. You may have heard the Gary Neville and co criticising United’s players and board recently.

You won’t have heard Neville questioning Solskjaer’s actions as manager. As United were eviscerated 4-0 at Everton last weekend their former captain talked of his “full belief in Ole”.

(Image: Getty)

Club sources have been briefing the same; floating the idea that Solskjaer might need not just the three years of his new contract, but longer still to make United competitive again. If it’s easy enough to doubt they possess such patience - or aptitude for long-term strategic football thinking – that has intriguing implications for this summer’s transfer market.

The club has already decided to jettison last season’s captain Antonio Valencia. Ander Herrera, angered by United’s negotiating stance on a new contract, has already agreed to join Paris Saint-Germain on a free transfer. Woodward has let the club’s best player David De Gea know they will not meet the goalkeeper’s conditions for extending a deal that expires next year.

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The club’s largest on-field investment Paul Pogba wants to join Real Madrid. Its most expensive forward Romelu Lukaku is talking openly of his desire to test himself in Serie A (where Antonio Conte would like to sign him).

United’s best-paid player Alexis Sanchez does not like life at Old Trafford and the club would gladly be rid of a salary that has spread discontent amongst team-mates.

And the dressing room knows its under immense external pressure. The aftermath of Everton is understood to have involved an angry inquest amongst the players as to who had leaked Solskjaer’s formation and team selection within minutes of it being announced. Marcus Rashford (another unhappy with his financial terms at Old Trafford) went to television after the derby defeat to criticise United’s performance.

“I think for now we need to...get back to how we were playing when the manager first came in,” said Rashford. “It’s nothing to do with ability because we have the players to do it. It’s just about the attitude and willingness to do it.”

As for Solskjaer, there’s no doubt the Norwegian has the attitude and willingness to manage this self-destructive club. The ability? That’s another matter entirely.