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When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was appointed Manchester United manager, many fans and pundits alike rejoiced.

Here, they claimed, was the true successor to Sir Alex Ferguson, the former striker done good, riding in to save the day after the poisonous reign of Jose Mourinho turned the club into also-rans.

A scarcely believable second-leg win over PSG in the Champions League sent them fawning. Rio Ferdinand, on BT Sport, told United to give Solskjaer the job on a permanent basis, and for him to be allowed to sign for as long as he wanted to. Henry Winter, perhaps the pre-eminent football journalist in this country, talked up the football, insisting that the "United of Solskjaer was the United of Ferguson".

It is all coming crumbling down. Solskjaer was, per Ferdinand’s request, given the United job on a permanent basis on March 28^th. Since then, United have beaten Watford and West Ham United, lost to Wolves in the Premier League – Solskjaer, while caretaker manager, saw his side beaten by Nuno Espirito Santo’s men in the FA Cup – and been outclassed by Barcelona in the Champions League. Then, on Sunday, the straw that broke the camel’s back: a 4-0 thumping at the hands of Everton.

Solskjaer came out afterwards and seemed to speak from the heart.

The BBC report that he said: "That performance is not good enough for a Manchester United team, from me to players, we let the fans down, we let the club down. That performance is difficult to describe because it is so bad.”

The fact of the matter is that Solskjaer has a very different idea of what a Manchester United performance should constitute than the rest of us. He is a Ferguson fanboy, at the end of the day, in thrall to the greatest manager the club has ever had. Of course, that is forgivable, he played under the man and won title after title with him, but it is not becoming of a good manager on his own terms. Reports have claimed that Ferguson offers advice on team selection and that Solskjaer won’t even park his car in the manager’s space at the training ground because he believes it belongs to the Scot.

Since Ferguson’s departure, though, United have lost games regularly. They have downed tools; they have been outrun, outfought and outthought. Sunday was the latest in a long line of poor results overseen first by David Moyes, then Louis van Gaal, Mourinho and now Solskjaer.

The first three, however, never invoked Ferguson quite so readily. In doing so, in being so reverent to the past, Solskjaer is inadvertently besmirching the legacy of a United legend.

Solskjaer said, upon his appointment, that Ferguson was his mentor. He told the club’s official website: “If you play at Man United, you play without fear and you play with courage.

“You go out there and express your skills. I've had the best [manager]. He [Sir Alex] just said 'go out and express yourselves, take risks.'”

This is simplistic at best and naïve at worst. Compare the squad today with the side Ferguson took to the Premier League title in the 2012-13 season. The likes of Rafael Da Silva, Jonny Evans, Anders Lindegaard, Tom Cleverley, Shinji Kagawa and Alexander Buttner would all be nowhere near today’s XI. Conversely, such stars as Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw would all walk into the 12-13 XI and play enough to wear a winners’ medal around their neck.

Ferguson’s main strength, at the end of the day, was cohesion. Regardless of the amount of transfers the club made – the signing of Robin van Persie was a masterstroke not since seen at Old Trafford – Ferguson always knew how to build the very best team for every occasion. That season, United won the league by 12 points with a worse squad than they have now. This term, they are sixth, 24 points behind Liverpool.

The league has moved on, of course it has, and it would be remarkable to see a prime Ferguson take on the likes of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp and see if he could still come out on top.

But we will never know. It is Solskjaer at the wheel, as the United fans so regularly sing, but he seems determined to constantly remind fans that Ferguson is also present as a backseat driver.

Indeed, it still feels as though this was an emotional appointment, driven by the desire to make fans happy.

It appears all the more illogical the more one looks at it, with Solskjaer regularly attempting to invoke a non-existent ‘United way’ that has not been a factor in results since Ferguson retired.

Consistently doing so will not do Solskjaer any favours.

In fact, it will only make his ultimate downfall even harder to swallow for a group of fans who need a manager to stand on his own two feet and help United back to theirs.