Ole Gunnar Solskjaer defends team selection after Man Utd crash out of FA Cup
By Tom Gott
Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has insisted that he had no choice but to rotate his team for Sunday's crushing FA Cup quarter-final defeat at the hands of Leicester City.
The FA Cup was effectively the only domestic competition left for United, who are out of the Carabao Cup and will need a miracle to win the Premier League, so many fans were left surprised to see the boss omit star players Bruno Fernandes, Scott McTominay and Luke Shaw from the starting lineup.
The changes left United looking somewhat disjointed and they were second best throughout as a double from Kelechi Iheanacho and a Youri Tielemans strike saw United exit the competition, but Solskjaer was adamant that his hands were tied when it came to selection.
"I would have started the same team again," Solskjaer said (via Sky Sports News). "We felt they had more than 45 minutes in them [Pogba and Van de Beek] and they are important players for us, that's why we started them.
"Every team selection has reasons behind it, Bruno has played lots of football - he broke all his records physically on Thursday. He is a human being, he's played a game every three or four days.
"It was a chance to start both Donny and Paul but the accumulation of games has caught up with us. With Bruno, he wants to play, but sometimes you have to make decisions for the benefit of the team. The accumulation of games has caught up with us."
It was Fernandes' absence which was felt the hardest. United lacked the spark he provides in attack, with replacement Donny van de Beek struggling to fill the void, but Solskjaer had no regrets about handing him a much-needed rest.
Fernandes broke individual records for ground covered and number of sprints on Thursday in the victory over AC Milan, and Solskjaer felt as though he was still feeling the impact.
“Of course, we’re disappointed we’re out but probably it’s just the sum of all the factors and all the games we’ve played lately, all the injuries," the boss continued. "I don’t want to make excuses but I try to find an explanation and an explanation is we had a few players coming back who have not really trained a lot.
"They’ve not played for a while and there are others who have played a lot but lacked a little zip and energy that we normally see. We conceded easy goals we don’t normally concede and it’s difficult against a good team like Leicester.”