LEICESTER, England – When the 2019-20 Premier League season is reviewed with a glance at the history books, it will appear that Manchester United did an easy job of qualifying for the Champions League. After all, manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer guided his team to third, the best of the rest after Liverpool and Manchester City, and they ended the campaign with a four-point cushion between them and Leicester fifth in the race for that crucial finish in the top four.
They say the league table never lies, but this time it might have been a little cheap with the truth.
United have struggled all season to move up to Champions League venues, and after tying Liverpool at home on October 1, the Solskjaer team had entered the Old Trafford record books for the wrong reasons registering the worst start to a club season since the Premier League started in 1992. But a Premier League season lasts 38 games and United has timed its career to perfection.
After moving up to the top four after their 37th game (a 1-1 draw at home against West Ham), United confirmed third place with their 2-0 victory at Leicester on the final day. A penalty from Bruno Fernandes in the 70th minute, followed by a second goal in the 98th minute when Jesse Lingard took advantage of a goalkeeper error Kasper Schmeichel, ensured victory for United in a game that Leicester needed to win to deny his opponents a place. in the Champions League. .
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“I am delighted,” said Solskjaer. “We have achieved a place in the Champions League, we have come far behind the teams and we have passed them.”
“The players have demonstrated their qualities as a group. They have taken on what we want and increasingly resemble a Manchester United team on the field.”
While Solskjaer and his players, along with the directors on the stand, aptly celebrated the victory that puts United back into Europe’s premier competition, the truth is that this is not a mission accomplished for the club. Solskjaer has simply led United back to base camp in his attempts to return to the pinnacle of the game, both in England and Europe, after a seven-year drift since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
It is true that United have competed in the Champions League since Ferguson left, but they have been participants rather than contenders. Unlike Liverpool, City and even Tottenham, who reached the final in 2019, United have never seemed to challenge Europe’s best teams in the post-Ferguson era, and Solskjaer’s team are unlikely to restore the The club’s longstanding reputation as a Champions League superpower next season. But the crucial element for United is that they are among the best again, giving them a chance to accelerate their route to the top.
If United lost in Leicester, which saw a header from Jamie Vardy hit the crossbar before Fernandes’ first game, another campaign in the Europa League would be like getting stuck in the mud as their national rivals drifted further away. But by being able to contemplate trips to Barcelona and Juventus instead of Astana and Belgrade, which were United’s calendar in the Europa League last season, Solskjaer can seek to recruit new players with the promise of Champions League nights in the next campaign. .
United’s finances will also be substantially boosted by being in the Champions League, so they now have the platform on which to build again. They cannot waste it.
Sunday’s victory at Leicester, and recent performances against Southampton, Crystal Palace and West Ham, not to mention the FA Cup semi-final loss to Chelsea, exposed the lack of depth within Solskjaer’s team. The Norwegian’s first XI can beat and beat any team in England, but beyond that, the closet is worryingly bare in terms of Manchester United’s quality.
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Solskjaer will join his team this summer, Jadon Sancho is the main objective, but he needs quantity and quality. His team’s selections have shown that he has lost, or is losing, faith in people like Lingard, Fred, Juan Mata, and Daniel James, while players like Phil Jones, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, and Andreas Pereira are unlikely to be in Old Trafford. next season. It is difficult to see United signing another seven to replace them.
Jurgen Klopp inherited a team with a similar imbalance when he arrived in Liverpool in October 2015, and it took the German at least two years to re-team into one that had a chance to compete, and has done so spectacularly since then. Solskjaer can at least trust a star-studded attack line from Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood. It also has Fernandes and Paul Pogba developing an understanding in the last third of the field.
But that kind of attacking quality will only carry United so far. Arguably it has been the key to entering the Champions League, but United must be more than just being in the competition: their history demands that they challenge them to win it.
That won’t happen next season, but being among the elite again is a crucial first step for United. By winning at Leicester, at least they have been given a chance to take it.
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