Every team should have a decent plan when they step onto the pitch, but you’ll need to find a way to overcome adversity and things are bound to go wrong, so the best managers in the world make their mark when they’re up against it.
Everything was going well for Man United tonight as they took an early lead, but the red card for Aaron Wan-Bissaka demonstrated exactly why Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is not a top-level manager.
He demonstrated a worryingly basic grasp of tactics by simply taking off an attacker for a defender, but it left United with no plan to attack or even retain the ball, so the end result was inevitable.
Young Boys may be seen as a minnow but they’re a good team with pace and players who want to get forward, so you’ll get burned against any Champions League team if you elect to play attack vs defence for an hour.
The lack of any kind of attacking threat allowed the Swiss side to pour forward at will, while United weren’t set up in a way that allowed them to keep the ball at all, so it became a procession towards David de Gea’s goal in that second half.
It did look like United had done enough until Jesse Lingard’s horrible late mistake but the foundations for the defeat were laid earlier in the game, and it’s moments like this that demonstrate why Solskjaer is inferior to his peers when it comes to thinking on his feet on the biggest stage.