Ole Gunnar Solskjaer takes his place at volatile Vincent Tan's table after becoming Cardiff City's new manager The mode of transport may have been significant. Not because he has an affection for personal aviation. But because it gave clear demonstration of how much he was wanted. Tan certainly believes he has landed a coup with this appointment. Despite having even less experience of managing in the Premier League than David Kerslake, the man in temporary charge of Cardiff at the Emirates, the 40-year-old has become one of the most coveted managerial talents in Europe. The extensive discussions before and after the game will have made one thing clear: when it comes to negotiation, he knows his worth. It is some rise, Solskjaer's. After retiring in 2007, he spent 2½ years as reserve team coach at Old Trafford. Sir Alex Ferguson had always reckoned that the manner in which his perennial substitute would assess the opposition to work out how best to inflict damage, marked him out as a future manager. The respect was mutual. The Norwegian kept a notebook in which he would record everything the man he still calls Boss said. It was, he reckons, the details that counted. "Towards the end of my career I was more and more conscious of how a little comment here, a little comment there made all the difference," he told The Daily Telegraph recently. He took up the job as manager of FK Molde when Uwe Rösler moved to Brentford in November 2010. He immediately made a fortress of the delightful, fjord-side Aker Stadion, as, in 2011, he guided the club to the league title for the first time in their 100-year history. He repeated the feat in 2012, and lifted the Norwegian cup in 2013. Throughout he was assisted by his English colleagues, Mark Dempsey and goalkeeper coach Richard Hartis, who he had taken with him from United, and who will doubtless both be joining him shortly in Wales. As his star rose in Norway, so his name was regularly linked to a return to the Premier League, the place he had long said he wanted to test his managerial credentials. Offers came in, but he turned them all down. Cardiff, then, might seem an odd choice to spark his ambition, particularly as he rejected Blackburn in 2011 because he rightly feared the unstable club politics could stall his career. After all, this is not the sanest of workplaces: it is not for nothing the bookies are offering odds as low as 3-1 that he will be jobless by the end of the season. Yet Tan has a fetishistic obsession with all things United, believing association with the club, even in something as tenuous as the colour of shirt or the playing career of the manager, is the best way for Cardiff to unlock the far eastern market. Solskjaer's position as a United legend will have facilitated the extraction of all sorts of assurances that were not available to his maligned predecessor Malky Mackay. What was going on in the Arsenal boardroom was not a mere exchange of pleasantries. Solskjaer will have seen at the Emirates that this is not a bad side he is inheriting. In David Marshall, Stephen Caulker and Jordon Mutch he has a core only a few well-chosen Ferguson-style observations from Premier League stability. Here they did well for more than 80 minutes until Niklas Bendtner and Walcott's late interventions undermined their resolve. "They played like they knew he was in the stand," said Arsène Wenger of Solskjaer's immediate effect. Mind, if it does work for the new man it will represent a first. The three Norwegians who have previously managed league clubs - Egil Olsen at Wimbledon, Stale Solbakken at Wolves and Henning Berg at Blackburn - have not had the commentators back home yelling about Maggie Thatcher taking a hell of a beating. Were he to baulk that trend at a place as volatile as Cardiff, it would be some achievement.