Solskjaer Rules Himself Out Of Villa Contention; Is Still Interested; Wants Job

As you've likely noticed, the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer saga has taken a bit of a turn. Or several turns, to be more precise. When I went to be last night at around 2:00 AM my time, OGS was still the favorite for the Aston Villa job. Sometime shortly after I entered the REM phase, Solskjaer had unequivocally ruled himself out of contention and pledged his allegiance to Molde. Around the time my alarm went off, the manager was planning to stay with the defending Tippeligaen champions, but would still be willing to discuss the position and perhaps listen to offers. And around the time my wife was violently shaking me awake and reminding me that her being fired for being late to work would have a drastic impact on my craft beer and football watching budgets, Solskjaer was once again minutes away from signing on the dotted line.

Not to write the one-millionth "in the modern, Twitter-fueled era the actual speed of negotiation doesn't move nearly as fast as we'd like to think" post, but...in the modern, Twitter-fueled era the actual speed of negotiation doesn't move nearly as fast as we'd like to think. As others have pointed out, much of the information being used to make definitive statements is far from actual, definitive proof of said statements; in many cases, it's based on shoddy translation and a lack of understanding of the situation from Molde and Solskjaer's perspective.

There's a tendency to get ahead of the game with things like this, and I'm far from innocent where this kind of thing is concerned. There was a time on Thursday afternoon where events were moving so rapidly that it seemed as though an announcement could be forthcoming at any moment. But that didn't end up happening, and it's beginning to look as though it won't be happening for a bit. I still think it's fair to consider Solskjaer the front-runner, but that doesn't mean he's a sure thing. The number of people that actually know what's happening is infinitesimally small, possibly as small as to include only Solskjaer, Randy Lerner and Paul Faulkner. Until one of those three says something definitive on the matter, it's advisable to be skeptical of anyone else that does so.