If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?
I can't imagine the first person to ever mutter those words was a football manager deciding whether to tweak his tactics after a win, but it's an adage Ole Gunnar Solskjaer stuck by as his Manchester United side travelled to Italy to face Atalanta in the Champions League on Tuesday.
The United boss shocked us all last weekend as he opted to deploy a 3-5-2 formation away at Tottenham, and his side's convincing 3-0 triumph down in north London meant he almost had no choice but to stick with the system for the trip to Atalanta.
The victory over Spurs proved to be something of a rare commodity in that us United fans struggled to pick out a single fault in our team's display, but once the dust had settled we stayed true to form in finding something to worry about - how on earth is Solskjaer going to fit all our wide attackers into a system which doesn't accommodate wingers?
You could probably stretch from Manchester to Bergamo if you were to print out all of the column inches written in the past few days asking what this new system means for Jadon Sancho and his fellow wingers, though Solskjaer did his best to rectify the issue by starting one of his wide forwards, Marcus Rashford, alongside Cristiano Ronaldo for the Champions League clash.
It really did not work.
It's not like Rashford hasn't played through the middle before, but it was almost like he was attached to the left wing by a bungee cord. Every time he even dared stray into a central position he found himself automatically drawn back out wide.
Whether Rashford's hybrid role was by design or just a result of his natural instinct to pull out to the flank we'll probably never know, but it meant Ronaldo was isolated and the attacking fluidity shown when the Portuguese talisman played alongside Edinson Cavani on Saturday seemed a distant memory.
Whenever Rashford did move inside he found himself swallowed up by the colossal Atalanta back three, and with United's midfield struggling to keep hold of the ball (that's a very nice way of putting it by the way) Rashford wasn't offered a single opportunity to stretch the home side's backline by running in behind.
Raphael Varane's worrying injury towards the end of the first half meant Solskjaer was forced to revert back to his trusty 4-2-3-1 formation, and despite not really impacting proceedings Rashford at least looked a little more lively and showed some nice link-up play in his preferred position on the left.
It's certainly not lost on me that Rashford bagged himself a goal against Spurs on Saturday when United played with a back three, but are we really going to accept that one of the brightest players in England has now been reduced to little more than a sprinter who is afforded cameo roles late in games against weary backlines?
If Rashford can't play in Solskjaer's new system then there's not a chance a more traditional winger like Sancho can, and the worries that United's saviour formation doesn't accommodate some of their best players may just have been confirmed.
Over to you, Ole.
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