What was even more disappointing was the 0-0 draw's composition. To be honest, it never seemed like anything more than a stalemate, and the manager struggled to see it when he selected the team when he decided not to make substitutions at halftime or on the hour mark, and when he left the bang average McFred – Fred and Scott McTominay – on the pitch for the whole 90 minutes when the game was begging to be won.
Since Solskjaer took over at Old Trafford, there has been a lot of criticism leveled at him for his failure to crack down the deep block – a defense that plays with a deep backline or ‘parks the bus,' as it has become known.
There has also been much criticism of his inconsistent roster rotation and propensity to make late substitutions. All three were present in this game.
When the long ball over the back of the defense's strategy was made ineffective by the deep line, United appeared to have no ‘Plan B' against a tenacious Leeds defense.
This also negated the one justification Solskjaer may have had for starting the woefully incompetent Dan James, whose only discernible talent is his ability to sprint quickly and get behind a high defensive line.
Summer signee Donny van de Beek, widely regarded as one of the most talented young midfielders in the world, must be wondering what he has to do to get into this United team.
He should have been used even more often earlier in the season, so that if Pogba was resting, as he was today, a quality substitute would have been possible.
Of course, a manager will rarely get his plans and starting lineups wrong, and as his own pre-match remarks confirm, nobody, least of all Solskjaer, wanted the normally daring Marcelo Bielsa to follow such a defensive approach.
However, there is no justification for not making reforms faster. As @Vintage Utd pointed out on Twitter,
Considering he was one of the best super subs in the history of football,’ it is hard to ‘understand why it takes Ole so long to make changes
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