I don't normally post on matchday threads ahead of the game but I think a few of us would nod in agreement to a lot of the sentiment in this article...
Parc de Princes remains the scene of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's most famous win as Manchester United manager and, in turn, the club's worst result of the post-Ferguson era
Finally free of the shackles of the Jose Mourinho experiment, the Norwegian's role as a caretaker manager lifted the spirits and made United dream again though it should have been obvious even back then that major surgery was required.
After all, this is a club who have strayed from major signing to major signing without all too much of a plan since Ferguson called it a day in 2013 so, with Mourinho out and some momentum built up, finally had the chance to start anew in the summer of 2019.
PSG, with all their flaws in continental competition, had other ideas.
Now, there was of course an element of luck to United’s 3-1 win in March 2019.
While the scenes of jubilation - even Rio Ferdinand’s infamous ‘United are BACK’ declaration - were perfectly reasonable within the prism of the evening, we must not forget that a controversial late penalty given against Presnel Kimpembe saw the Red Devils through.
Never has a result papered over the cracks so much.
United had luckily beaten a side who missed chance after chance in the first-leg to truly put them to the sword with a dubious late penalty, but, given the stature of the game, had to then give an under qualified manager the top job on a permanent basis.
There was simply no way they couldn’t.
From then, Ed Woodward’s reluctance to make a change despite the fact Mauricio Pochettino (who’s job at Tottenham followed a similar remit of developing a side to attack the upper echelons of the Premier League, only with far less resource) is out of work continues to cost United ground in the title race, all stemming from that night in Paris.
A run of two wins in eight Premier League games saw the excitement fade quickly amid a meek quarter-final exit to a Barcelona side famously beaten by Liverpool, as well as an FA Cup exit at the same stage to Wolves.
The 2019-20 campaign may have seen United finish third but it took a late season collapse from Leicester City for them to secure qualification for the Champions League during a season all of Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham were undergoing major transitions.
This year, they've already been soundly beaten at home by Crystal Palace and Tottenham (6-1 no less) and relied on a VAR-awarded penalty after the game had finished to edge past Brighton, who had utterly outplayed them on the South Coast.
Previous reports have claimed Woodward is not prepared to sack Solskjaer despite a number of poor results having made a number of poor appointments since 2013, only adding to the misery the Paris dream eventually caused.
There have been miserable days since Ferguson retired but none have had a longer-standing impact on United’s 3-1 win over PSG in March 2019.
