Manchester United’s turnaround under Ole Gunnar Solskjær has been well-documented, but sometimes it takes the numbers to give you an insight into just how dramatically players like Paul Pogba have stepped it up.
The club record signing was being left out towards the end of José Mourinho’s reign, but since the new interim boss has come in he’s started to look like the player people expected when United forked out £89million to bring him back from Juventus.
Pogba was averaging a goal or assist every 175 minutes in the league under Mourinho this season, beginning that run with a penalty against Leicester City in the opening game of the season. His through-ball for Marcus Rashford in the reverse fixture, however, kept him at one every 74 minutes under Solskjaer.
As with Pogba’s spot-kick on the opening day, some Leicester generosity played its part, but at the same time we saw something from him which others might not have tried or even wanted to try.
When the Frenchman sees Ricardo’s loose pass heading towards him, he needs to prepare his body to find a run which hasn’t even begun. There’s no question of keeping possession or of playing the pass before the final pass.
And then the execution. It’s the ball of a man who has the strings in his hands and doesn’t even need to pull them with force when he can get the same result by simply caressing them.
Being the orchestrator is second-nature to him, just as it has been ever since Solskjær came in. There might be bigger questions out there regarding whether he should have needed the switch-up, but we’re going to ignore them for now and just enjoy the positives.