Ole Gunnar Solskjær says he has a “vision” of where Manchester United should be in two years if he is appointed as the permanent manager.
The Norwegian is undefeated in his 10 matches as interim manager, winning nine. Although the decision regarding who will become José Mourinho’s full-time successor is expected in the close season, Solskjær can picture where he would want United to be.
Phil Jones is one of the players who have signed a new long-term contract, and Solskjær referred to this when speaking about the vision. He said: “Every day I feel that I help the club by putting my stamp on it, but sometimes the decisions of the players’ futures are not down to me either; it’s the players. Do they want to stay or move on? But we have a vision and a picture of how we want to look in a few years.
“We have to think long term and also short term and I’ve got a picture of what this Manchester United team should look in a couple of years [and] I put my views to Ed [Woodward, the executive vice-chairman] and the club.”
This vision has not changed since he took over. “I’ve supported and followed Manchester United for many years and I did have a clear view on what I thought my opinion would be [on arrival]. You get a different view on players but we’re not too far away from when I came,” he said.
If United beat Fulham on Saturday they will enter the top four for the first time since the opening weekend. “Of course you take one step at a time and that’s one of the goals we’ve set and if we do so we want to stay there and improve on that,” Solskjær said. “The last two months have been fantastic so consistency is now the key word. We have to keep on improving, keep on winning games, but in a better way than say the Leicester game [a 1-0 victory], when we had to hold on.
“It was good enough but we shouldn’t just be happy with just good enough; we want to improve in games like this. Fulham is a character revealer. It reveals: ‘Do we have the focus on what’s important which is always the next game and can we forget about [next week’s match against] PSG?’
“The focus has been around the PSG game for a long time – Chelsea, Liverpool [also later this month]. But they’re not the games that will move us up the table, that’s the other games.”
Of Jones’s fresh deal Solskjær said: “He’s won the Premier League and [other] trophies. He knows what it takes, he’s been here so long so he knows what it takes for us to move up the table.” – Guardian service
