Rio Ferdinand has admitted he was not initially taken with the appointment of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United – but has been impressed with how he has gone about his business.<\/p>\n
Goals from Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford gave him a seventh consecutive win as United beat Brighton 2-1 at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n
It comes on the back of his most impressive performance to date, when they won 1-0 at Tottenham, with the interim boss giving his players a new lease of life since taking over from Jose Mourinho last month.<\/p>\n
When asked if anyone could have come in and done the job that the Norwegian has, Ferdinand launched a staunch defence of his former team-mate.<\/p>\n
“If it was that easy, they would have gone in there and done it already,” Ferdinand told BT Sport.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had three managers since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, all failed really and now Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has come in and I’ll admit it, before, I wasn’t totally sold on it when he first got it.<\/p>\n
“Everyone was talking about (Mauricio) Pochettino, temporary basis, but he ain’t come here to be temporary.”<\/p>\n
While many of the teams United have beaten in recent weeks are not in the top half of the table, Ferdinand said that did not mean the result was guaranteed.<\/p>\n
He added: “You can say he should have won those games, but (Jose) Mourinho did not consistently win these games.<\/p>\n
“Teams don’t automatically roll over because of the badge on the shirt, just because you’re meant to beat them, you still have to go and do it.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just the results, it’s the manner in which he’s done it.<\/p>\n
“He’s changed the mentality and psyche of the players.<\/p>\n
“He wants players to play to their strengths. Pogba, the talisman, was brought in to be that man. He has told him you’re not a defensive midfielder, I don’t want you to defend, get in the box and affect the ball.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t working out consistently for him but now he’s scoring goals.<\/p>\n
“Rashford, [playing] as a number nine. People are saying ‘Rashford or Kane’ – that was never the conversation before Ole Gunnar Solskjaer came in.”<\/p>\n
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Rio Ferdinand has admitted he was not initially taken with the appointment of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United – but has been impressed with how he has gone about his business. Goals from Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford gave him a seventh consecutive win as United beat Brighton 2-1 at Old Trafford. It comes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}