Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
United don’t need interim and caretaker managers. They need Poch in place
HAD I been sitting in the Manchester United dressingroom yesterday, I know exactly how the conversation would have unfolded.
Something like this: ‘Hold on. So we’ve got Michael Carrick for four or five games, and then someone else until the end of the season, and then in the summer they’re going to bring in some other fella? That’s shambolic. This is Manchester United – just give us a proper gaffer now.’
United have players in that dressing-room who are used to winning and right now they will be asking questions like: ‘What is the focus? What is the direction because there are still things to be won?’
A penny for the thoughts of Cristiano Ronaldo right now. He must be wondering what he’s come back to.
Footballers need someone to respond to and, if I was looking at Carrick and then whoever, I’d be thinking ‘coasting.’
And if you’re coasting at United, there’s no guarantee you won’t be in a similar position to the one Arsenal found themselves in last season.
They were 10th with just a few games to go, when suddenly one or two Emirates players decided to pull their finger out.
That’s what I’ll expect if the situation is allowed to drag on at Old Trafford with Carrick and whoever follows.
And it’s why United bigwig Ed Woodward should already be on the phone to Paris Saint-germain sporting director Leonardo and president Nasser Al-khelaifi urging them to see if Zinedine Zidane will join them and, if so, telling them they’ll come to a sensible compensation arrangement for their boss Mauricio Pochettino.
In former Spurs chief Pochettino, United would get someone who would change their season for the better while, in Zidane (left) PSG would be getting a World Cup-winning hero and serial Champions League-winning gaffer – someone who’s an uptick on Poch.
It’s a win-win situation and I’m guessing that Pochettino would be willing to walk from Paris to Manchester.
I know former Real Madrid manager Zidane has been mooted for United in recent weeks but I’m not sure he’d be the right fit for Old Trafford. He has never played here, he doesn’t know the country and, when you’ve not even tasted Premier League football, you can’t be expected to come into its biggest club and make a difference.
Poch, however, knows the league, speaks the language, and could quickly identify the players who will allow him to implement the pressing game he loves to play.
He has managed a dressingroom with Lionel Messi, Neymar, Kylian Mbappe, Sergio Ramos et al, so handling Ronaldo and Co won’t be a problem.
If you get Pochettino, potential targets will also take notice, but if you drift towards the summer and miss out on the Champions League, who of any quality would want to join? United must be clever and decisive and get their man in now.
I’D struggle to see sacked United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer working at a Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, Derby or any other big Championship club, such is his glaring lack of direction as a manager.
What’s his style, what’s his MO, what’s his footprint?
He doesn’t have one and needs to reinvent himself as more ruthless, more tactically savvy, otherwise he’s finished as a legitimate tier-one or tier-two manager in England.