Manchester United must ask themselves if this is what they want the vision of their future to look like

Wins over Manchester City and Tottenham bought Ole Gunnar Solskjaer time but the jury is still out on his brand of football, and a decision will need to be made on the club’s direction before it is too late

If this really is to be Manchester United’s season, the question remains over whether this regime should really represent their future. Nobody can be surprised by this latest defeat, 2-0 at Watford. They’ve lost to the bottom club, but there’s no sense this is the campaign bottoming out. This is just what it is, the level.

The wins over Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City were obviously positives, but they were not the signs of progress many had hoped for, and instead actually prove the major problem.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer plays small-team football – on the break, ceding the play, hoping for breaks. The fact they still have some top talent like Marcus Rashford means that can work very well in the open space offered in behind by the bigger clubs, but evidently doesn’t work at all when anyone tries to close up against them.

And the latter is going to be the case in the majority of games, since this is United we’re talking about. It’s just this isn’t really United in the way they’re playing.

They don’t control games. They don’t impose their football on the opposition. They generally don’t know what to do when they’re granted the ball.

There are more basic stats than possession or those pitiful through-ball numbers – bottom of the Premier League – that illustrate this.

United have won a mere six league games this season, just a third of their matches. Four of those victories came against the current top six, and they are the only side to take points off Liverpool, but four of their five defeats came against those in the bottom half. The other loss was against ninth-placed Newcastle United.

The other wins, meanwhile, came against the two bottom-half clubs that will really open up against you in Norwich City and Brighton and Hove Albion. That's not a coincidence. It's consequence.

This is how it’s been, and how it looks likely to be. It is not a recipe for a top-four place or long-term development. There remains a fundamental issue with how the team sets up, and how Solskjaer and his staff do not seem to coach this side to play the co-ordinated attacking football that really separates the sides at the top level of the game. This is fundamentally what is missing.

Many might point to the absence of Paul Pogba, and it felt so pointed that he came on against Watford to play the pass of the game, but if your entire attacking approach is based on one player it is a problem in itself. It is actually an indictment of the system you’re supposed to be trying to integrate your players in - especially if the many murmurs are true and they don’t plan to sign midfield quality in January.

It similarly means the question does come back to one man, but it’s not Pogba.

It’s Solskjaer. There’s no getting away from it, or the prospect of Mauricio Pochettino. Serious questions must still be asked over what exactly the Norwegian’s idea of football is.

It has never really been clearly articulated other than in the vaguest and broadest of terms, and has never been clearly shown, beyond quick counter-attacks.

There are still serious doubts over whether he is the right man for such a job. Ed Woodward is invested in Solskjaer, and feels there are a lot of good foundations being put in, but it still feels such an unnecessary shot in the dark for a club of this size, when a manager of Pochettino’s proven ability is just waiting for a job.

Pochettino's availability clouds Woodward's faith in Solskjaer (Reuters) (Action Images via Reuters)

There was an irony to those wins over Spurs and City in that such good results seem to come at exactly the wrong time for many that wanted United to make the ruthless long-term decision to bring in the Argentine.

It’s taken no time at all for everything to level right back out, to something so underwhelming, and yet so predictable.

This is after all the season. This is United right now. Should it be their future?