Manchester United Women: Eva Olid Faces Early Challenges
Eva Olid is not hiding from the numbers. Two games, two defeats, one goal scored, seven conceded. A 2-1 loss away at London City Lionesses, then a 5-0 dismantling by Chelsea at Leigh Sports Village. Bottom of the Women’s Super League table. This is not how Manchester United imagined the post-Marc Skinner era would begin.
But the new manager is not flinching.
“It is constructive criticism and that is normal,” Olid said. “The first two performances have not been good. We are the first to say we are not happy.”
The scrutiny has been sharp, and it has been swift. United have managed just two shots on target across their opening two league games and have had less than 40% of the ball in both. For a coach who arrived from Hearts with a clear idea of a possession-based, attacking style, the early evidence has jarred with the sales pitch.
Olid, 41, expected the reaction. She just refuses to be consumed by it.
“Yes and no,” she replied when asked if the criticism had been hard to take. “That is part of the job. I don't think it affects me.
“The other part is the part I don't understand – people wanting to hurt [us], but they are not going to.
“People that understand football know that the beginning and how you start does not define how you end the season. We know the direction and what we are doing will give us success in the long term.”
Her priority, she insists, lies elsewhere.
“So yeah, I'm good. The only thing that is important for me is the players. I'm worried always that they need to feel good and strong, nothing else.”
A brutal fixture, at the worst possible time
If United were looking for a gentle reset, they will not find it this weekend. Next up is Arsenal at Emirates Stadium on Saturday evening, a stage that has not been kind to them of late.
The Gunners are unbeaten in 19 WSL matches. United have not won at Emirates since November 2022. The contrast in momentum is stark: Arsenal rolling, United reeling.
Bottom with zero points and a single goal is not where a club of United’s ambition expects to be. Olid, though, frames the slump as part of a larger journey.
“Yeah, football is like life. You have good moments and difficult moments. I think all the teams in the season have a difficult moment. Ours is the start,” she said.
“We are learning as a team to grow because the difficult moments make you grow. Once we've passed this difficult moment and start [to build] momentum, I think we will be so much better.”
Her message to the dressing room has been simple, almost stripped back.
“My main message [to the players] has been about them being themselves. They are not showing in the first two matches who they are and what they can do.”
Between old steel and new ideas
Olid walked into a team with a clear identity under Skinner: compact, organised, hard to beat. That defensive platform helped propel United into the Champions League quarter-finals. Tearing that up overnight was never the plan.
She wants evolution, not erasure.
“They cannot forget what they were good at before. At the same time, little by little, we need to implement the new style,” she said.
The tension between those two strands – keeping the solidity that made United competitive while layering on a more expansive, possession-heavy game – has been evident in their early performances. The players, Olid admits, may be carrying too much in their heads and not enough in their instincts.
“The players have been so focused and thinking a lot – overthinking maybe – trying to do everything and in the end, they don't do anything because they are not expressing themselves like I know they can.”
Right now, United look caught between identities. Not quite the pragmatic unit of last season, nowhere near the fluid, front-foot side Olid envisions. That limbo has left them exposed.
Respect from the other dugout
Across the technical area on Saturday will be Arsenal head coach Renee Slegers, who has watched Olid’s first steps at United with a coach’s empathy rather than a rival’s glee.
“Eva has had so little time,” Slegers said, acknowledging the scale of the task facing her counterpart.
“As a coach it's a decision you make – are you going to change things straight away or are you going to have another approach where, over time, you look to try to change things progressively?
“That's probably the balance for her. I don't know what her philosophy is but I imagine it's a challenge. I understand the disappointment from a fan perspective – but there has been so little time.”
That is the crux of the debate around United’s start. How long does a new manager get to imprint a style at a club that expects to compete at the top, immediately? How much patience will there be if the defeats keep stacking up?
Olid is betting on time, on process, on the idea that early turbulence will harden her team for what comes later. Arsenal away, unbeaten in 19, is a savage examination of that belief.
If United can withstand the storm at Emirates and show even a glimpse of the side Olid insists they can become, the narrative begins to shift. If they don’t, the questions – and the criticism she calls “normal” – will only grow louder.
