As reported by the Manchester Evening News, former Manchester United player turned pundit Gary Neville has highlighted one big mistake that was committed by Solskjaer against Leicester City. It was the selection of center-back Harry Maguire.
The English center-back was injured against Aston Villa and was reported to be out for a few weeks. To make matters worse, our another reliable center-back Raphael Varane was also injured during France’s Nation League finals against Spain.
With both players expected to be out of the trip to King Power Stadium, many considered Eric Bailly to start alongside Victor Lindelof. But out of nowhere, Harry Maguire was included in the starting XI even after he was not looking fully at it.
Gary Neville has pointed out that big mistake of involving the former Foxes center-back and not giving chance to Eric Bailly who could have played with full potential. Considering the fact that Harry Maguire had a hand in all four of Leicester City’s goals.
He said:
“On Saturday, the biggest problem Solskjaer made was the selection of Maguire. He was absolutely nowhere near [fit enough]. We’ve all had games in our career where you are not fit and you are nowhere near it. Picking him in the first place was a problem, maybe not having Varane caused him to do that.”
“But then not taking him off at half-time was another mistake, he was genuinely nowhere near it. I was at the game watching and then, after the game, I’m watching Thomas Tuchel give Sarr and Chalobah their games and their belief.”
“I think Bailly should have played alongside Lindelof, that was the biggest mistake. Maguire has been brilliant for United for the last two seasons, but the first problem the manager had was selecting him. He had no training for four weeks and was nowhere near fit.”
This is quite a good point to debate on as Maguire was looking very slow and uncomfortable against Leicester. Also, he was lacking concentration and so couldn’t justify the captain’s armband that was given to him by Solskjaer which was another mistake.
Tuchel has similar issues when Chelsea faced Brentford, but he instead made a clever decision and backed his young center-backs Chalobah and Malang Sarr and they performed well.
Obviously, Solskjaer shouldn’t be forcing his players to play even if they are not fully fit as that can affect the whole outcome of the match.
