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Over the course of 90 minutes and extra time, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer could have made six game-altering substitutions against Villarreal in Wednesday’s Europa League final. Instead, he gave just one player more than five minutes to make an impact. That player was Fred, a defensive midfielder, and he replaced Mason Greenwood. As the dust settles on United’s dramatic penalty shootout defeat, it is this indecision and hesitation from their bench that seems so hard to understand. Yes, penalties can go either way. But there is surely no way that United should have allowed the game to reach that stage without at least putting Villarreal under sustained pressure. For almost the entirety of extra time, United played like a team without energy or ideas. They had control of the game for much of the second half, but they let that control slip as Unai Emery’s side introduced fresh legs at the end of normal time. Emery had made five substitutions by the 88th minute. Solskjaer, by contrast, waited until the 100th minute to introduce Fred and did not make another change until the 115th minute. It raises the question: what could Solskjaer have possibly been seeing that made him think no changes were necessary? Bruno Fernandes was anonymous, shackled by Villarreal’s compact system. Marcus Rashford continuously made the wrong decision in the final third. Edinson Cavani looked increasingly exhausted as the game wore on. If anything, United’s most dangerous player was Greenwood — and it was Greenwood who came off.
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