Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has a shining example of how to react to Manchester United’s humiliating 5-0 loss to Liverpool, with archive footage of Sir Alex Ferguson describing his mentality to come back from big defeats.
Solskjaer is now the bookies’ favourite to be the next Premier League manager to lose his job after the record-breaking defeat against fierce rivals Liverpool.
United found themselves 4-0 down in a stunning first-half for the first time in the division’s history, with Solskjaer helpless on the touchline as Mohamed Salah and Co. ran riot.
Post-match the Norwegian admitted it was ‘the darkest day I’ve had leading these players’.
His old boss Ferguson was in attendance, and he was seen shaking his head as Liverpool racked up goal after goal.
Ferguson, who famously lost 4-1 to Rafael Benitez’ Liverpool at Old Trafford before going on to win the Premier League title that season, spoke to talkSPORT’s Jim White back in the day about his response to demoralising defeats.
And it serves as timely advise for Solskjaer, with the legendary coach saying the key is acceptance, determining the cause and making sure it doesn’t happen.
“Defeat happens, I can accept defeat no bother no problem for me,” Ferguson said in the Sky Sports interview with the now-talkSPORT host.
“Maybe when I was very young I found it difficult, but you have to have the dignity to eventually be able to accept defeat and be a good loser, but that doesn’t mean to say you forget it.
“My purpose after that was to make sure it never happened again. I just hated losing that way.
“I would tell my players at the end of the game in no uncertain terms and we’d always try to find the reason why we lost that game, but the next match was another world and I made sure I was going to win that next match.
“That purpose and determination is something that’s in you, it’s either there or not there.”
Ferguson then referred to a specific example that Solskjaer will undoubtedly remember fondly.
United were 1-0 down to Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final heading into stoppage time, when a Teddy Sheringham equaliser and a 93rd minute winner from Solskjaer stunned their German opponents.
Ferguson’s side took home the treble in an astonishing season, with opposing manager Ottmar Hitzfeld humiliated, but Bayern recovered to win the grand prize for the second time in 2001.
Ferguson attributes much of Hitzfeld and Bayern’s later success to his attitude following the historic loss to United.
“I have some great examples of it, how you handle defeat,” Fergie explained.
“Remember we won the ‘99 final in Barcelona, and Hitzfeld was devastated at the end, you could tell that.
“How you recover from that, no one knows, but he did because as you know he won the European Cup shortly after that, and the following season I went to see Rangers play Bayern in Munich.
“I was actually going to see a player and after the game Markus Horwick says, ‘Ottmar would like you to join him for dinner after the game’.
“So I go and his two brothers are there, ‘Oh Mr Ferguson, pleasure to meet you, fantastic performance last year, well done’, and I’m saying to myself, ‘is this a game, this?’
“It was fantastic, talk about magnanimity, it was absolutely brilliant .
“Then Ottmar came, ‘oh it’s great to see you’, and then all of a sudden all the Bayern players started to come up to shake my hand to congratulate us on beating them in the final, can you believe that?
“Now that’s a great example, and I bet you Ottmar felt the same as I always did the next day: that won’t happen again.”
Time will tell whether Solskjaer will take his former manager’s advice…
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