Ole Gunnar Solskjaer says Paul Pogba's introduction gave Manchester United more confidence in their rousing Champions League win over Paris Saint-Germain.
Solskjaer named Pogba on the bench for the second game running in United's group stage opener as he retained the midfield axis of Scott McTominay and Fred following Saturday's 4-1 win at Newcastle.
United lined up in a 3-4-1-2 against PSG as centre-backs Harry Maguire and Eric Bailly were out injured. Debutant Alex Telles started at left wing-back as Luke Shaw moved inside to left centre-back.
Pogba replaced Telles in the 67th minute to signal a formation change to 4-3-3 and his arrival sparked a momentum shift that was crowned by Pogba assisting Marcus Rashford's late winner.
"I think it's a strange season because no fans but also we had no preparation," Solskjaer said. "Paris had no preparation for the season. We went straight from the Europa League and Champions League into the season. Difficult season for everyone.
"It's going to be a challenging one and we have seen strange results in the Premier League. Paris lost their first two games in the league. We will have to wait and see what happens.
"But we played well today, we showed confidence. As you said, at 1-1 in the middle of the second-half we started to get more confidence, played, Paul Pogba came on and did really well for us and we created chances.
"I thought we created chances. Of course, we lost Eric, we lost Harry, Mason [Greenwood] isn't ready yet. We made a little change. We've got players that can play split strikers and we thought they could do some damage.
"Axel, in his first game in 10 months, and Alex [Telles]'s debut, so we don't really want to play a back four, so we played a back three, or back five, call it whatever you like, and I thought it worked well."
