Ole Gunnar Solskjaer blames the colour red for Man Utd's poor home form

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has clearly been studying at Jurgen Klopp's school of ludicrous excuses as he claimed the team's poor home form was due to all the red banners in the stands.

Right then.

United have won just eight of their 15 Premier League home matches this season, while Real Sociedad and AC Milan both left Old Trafford with draws in the Europa League, but United's impressive away record has helped carry them through.

Figuring out why Old Trafford has lost its sense of fear has been high on Solskjaer's agenda, and it seems as though he has settled on blaming a colour. As you do.

"If you look at all the banners around the edge they are not red anymore," Solskjaer said (via Sky Sports News).

"We have looked into this, and there shouldn't be any reason [why home form is worse] but some of the players have mentioned that, when making that split-second decision, to look to see if your teammate is there or not, and the red shirt, on a red background, with red seats - we have of course tried to change that, along with the anti-racism campaign, that was important that wasn't red too.

"When you have a 4-0 win away against Sociedad you don't have to win at home, and the first game against Milan, we conceded in the last minute. I still think we have played some good football at home.

"We started off badly with three defeats, Palace, Tottenham and Arsenal early on, but we have improved."

In Solskjaer's defence, it is hard to distinguish a person from a piece of cloth. Skin, hair, shorts and socks do all go invisible from time to time. We've all been there...totally.

Fortunately for United, they've got rid of the banners now, and these replacements will soon be removed to welcome fans back. Those supporters will flock to Old Trafford in their favourite United shirts, making the stands look like a wall of...red.

Solskjaer's comments brought a laugh out of Gary Neville, who joked on Twitter that the situation reminded him of Sir Alex Ferguson forcing his team to change out of their grey kit in an away trip to Southampton in 1996 because of a so-called colour clash.

It's not quite as bad as that, but be honest, it's not far off.

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