When talking about dressing room leaks while he was manager at Old Trafford, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has detailed how some Manchester United players turned “sour.”
In the summer of 2019, Solskjaer was elevated to full-time manager after being named temporary manager of United in the wake of Jose Mourinho’s dismissal in 2018.
Following his leadership of United to a Europa League semifinal and a second-place Premier League result that season, the team fell to Villarreal in the Europa League final the following year.
The Norwegian failed to lead United to the heights of the previous season, and after a 4-1 loss against Watford left them sitting seventh in the Premier League standings, Solskjaer was fired.
As his rule came to an end, a number of leaks surfaced in different media publications, purportedly based on sources in the United dressing room.
Additionally, special guest Solskjaer discussed the leaks on the most recent Stick To Football episode of The Overlap with hosts Roy Keane, Jamie Carragher, and Gary Neville.
He explained: “I felt we [coaching staff] had a very good rapport with the players, but there are always one or two in a squad that leak things because they are unhappy.
“Being a manager, you play a game Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, you sack about 14 players every game, and the next morning you have to tell them they have another chance.
“There are only a certain amount of times you can say, ‘I’ll give you that game, you’ve got a chance’.
“In the end, they go sour. We had a big squad with too many players. If you have too many players, they get unhappy.”
Since leaving United, Solskjaer has not held a managerial position again, however he was recently connected to a possible post-til-the-end replacement of Thomas Tuchel at Bayern Munich.
But the German powerhouses later declared that Tuchel will finish the season before stepping down, with Xabi Alonso, the manager of Bayer Leverkusen, being the front-runner to take over at the Allianz Arena.
