Poch off limits so Ole will get time to sort it
COLLY
JOSE MOURINHO was given time to breathe during his illfated reign at Manchester United.
So too Louis van Gaal.
Even David Moyes lasted 10 months before Ed Woodward wielded the axe, and current boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, ignoring the close season, is still a couple of months short of that.
So I’m really not sure why people think Woodward will be moving to replace the Norwegian any time soon, even on the back of another testing week that saw them given a scare by Rochdale and lose at
West Ham.
And I’m adamant that, barring a capitulation of epic proportions, the United goalscoring legend will still be in situ come the end of the season. Woodward is a smart man, and he’ll be well aware that the club is a work in progress.
Perhaps more pertinently, he’ll also be aware that sacking Solskjaer now really wouldn’t reflect well on him.
He’d look like the idiot who can’t get the right person in.
A lot of fans are looking for an excuse to relight the bonfire under the club’s owners and Woodward will know he has to balance that out.
Rebuild
So I imagine he will have looked at the different scenarios and thought: ‘Well, nothing’s going to be won or lost until the run-in and we’ll probably have a better idea of how we’ll be looking around March.’
If United are eighth or 10th with six or seven weeks to go, and Leicester and West Ham are well ahead of them, then there might be a decision to be made which would see
MANCHESTER UNITED’S defeat by
West Ham and the scare
they were given by Rochdale show they just don’t have the senior players with the bottle, spite and aggression needed to get them over the bumps in the road. The squad is full of nice guys like Juan Mata. They’re getting like Arsenal. They need a Roy Keane – someone who’ll turn the physio’s table over now again to frighten the life out of everyone and keep them
on their toes. the club bring in a Guus Hiddink-like figure to do the same sort of job he has done a couple of times at Chelsea. But there’s no expectation for United to win the Premier League this season because it’s widely accepted that Liverpool and Manchester City, in no particular order, are by a long way the two best teams in the country.
And as long as United are in with a chance of finishing in the top four, which of course they still are, then Solskjaer (below) is on course to meet expectations.
United will probably allow for one Champions League and two Europa League finishes in the next three years as the rebuild takes place. So I can’t see the point in sacking him now.
It’s not like they will get Mauricio Pochettino mid-season, whatever is going on between him and Tottenham, and how many other great managers are there looking for work? We are not going to see Mourinho returning to the club he left last December, and Max Allegri’s name has been on no one’s lips because United want a more youthfulful approach.
I know Spurs fans don’t like me saying this and I don’t like to because I have a soft spot for Tottenham. But Poch remains the most obvious candidate.
I wonder if all these smoke signalsls he’s sending out – the messages thatat he’s feeling down, feeling flat – are essentially him saying to United: ‘Give me a shout, let’s talk, line up the move for the summer and in the e meantime I will make sure I get Tottenham in the top four again’.
Then we might see Solskjaer ousted at the end of the campaign.
But, barring a complete disaster, it won’t be before then.