In true Glazer style, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was appointed as a kind of sales rep of the month. After some brand-boosting returns, Manchester United jumped at the easiest option without exhausting the other possibilities.

But United’s problem is not Solskjaer, a stand-up guy who represents everything the club is meant to be about. United supporters must be asking themselves: when the Glazers and Ed Woodward, their boss on ground, awarded Solskjaer a permanent contract on 28 March, did they first establish that Mauricio Pochettino and others were completely ‘un-gettable’? Was it really a “thorough process,” or did they just like Solskjaer’s numbers and the smiles on everyone’s faces?

Again, though, United’s malaise does not start in the manager’s office. Forget the smiles. On Jose Mourinho’s face the truth about this squad showed as anger. In Solskjaer’s features you can see shock that United players can be so passive, so unprofessional. The hardest thing for a manager to observe is a rotten squad culture, and United have one, which requires a purge of the sort the club are ill-equipped to pursue.

There is no wish to rewrite Mourinho’s time at United, which was grim, but Solskajer’s predecessor was right about one thing. There is something rotten in Peter Schmeichel’s old state of Denmark. This is not intuition. It can be proved.