Paul Pogba’s public criticism of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer: what happens next? | OneFootball

Paul Pogba’s post-match comments following Manchester United’s 4-2 defeat by Leicester City yesterday have dominated the headlines in the Sunday papers.

As reported here after the game, Pogba spoke to the cameras after the game and gave a gruelling assessment of his team’s recent form, saying:

‘To be honest, we have been having these kind of games for a long time. We have not found the problem, conceding easy goals, stupid goals.

‘We need to be more mature, play with more experience and arrogance in a good way. We need to find something, we need to change.

‘We have to find what’s the key of this change and this game that we lose because we deserve to lose today.’

When asked if he felt the team was making the same mistakes and not learning, Pogba replied:

‘Yeah, I think so. It’s all of us. We need to find something, we need to change something. I don’t know if it the mindset of all of us, the players, as we start. We really don’t know.

‘It’s frustrating because it’s something we don’t understand and we have to find out very fast.

‘We need to find their game. We need to find the right mentality, the right tactic.’

And it is this response to the second question, not as widely reported as the first, that seems to be damning of his manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and his coaching staff.

Simply put, questioning the tactic is questioning the coaches.

The comment ‘we need to find their game’ also suggests a tactical criticism – that the opposition’s way of playing is not addressed by the manager.

It may well be that Solskjaer retains the board’s support for now but a player mutiny with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Paul Pogba in the team could and probably would force their hand, as we discussed here a few days ago.

The fact that Pogba has questioned the coaching publicly in this manner is perhaps the biggest sign yet that such a mutiny might not be far away.