I wanted Enrique but it's not possible and vote Carrick. Need to be ready for next season, genuinely feel a good transfer window makes us compete as competition has dipped. Carrick is a risk but what are the alternatives that aren't now, no obvious candidate. I'll be happy to back Carrick with the players, nothing guaranteed next year. United seem to be always in the market at wrong time.
Next Manager Poll
- Thread starter Andy_Cole
- Start date
- Status
Ancelotti is gettable. It is not acceptable for the club to be that lazy for taking the easy route for the most important role at the club.
Might not be conclusive but I've seen reports (briefings really) that CA's pretty much done with the club game and has settled for the international manager lifestyle at this sage of his career/life. He's commented before how Utd might be the most stressful job in the world ( expectations vs resources; at least at Madrid you have pretty much an open chequebook and can sign pretty much anyone you want if you're prepared to go hard enough in for them).
I do think the club should be seriously exploring Enrique, though, and persuading him not to sign anything/make a decision before the end of the season and CL final. If he wins a 2nd CL in a row there might be something to 'United represents a new challenge' and the chance to stake your claim as the best coach in the world, given the additional challenge: I know other sides occasionally win that league, but in practice there's no real glory to be gained with PSG domestically once you've ticked off the 1st Ligue 1.
We don’t necessarily need an elite level coach. I think we need someone who can just be a crucial cog in the wheel so to speak, where their primary remit is coaching the first team and may be giving opinions on potential recruitment (incomings and outgoings).
Crucially though, this coach has to be someone who can adapt to the squad and the league and stay ahead of opposition from a tactical standpoint. Ideally he has to play nice football too.
Under Carrick, it feels like we exploded out of the blocks against City and Arsenal when expectations were rock bottom. Since then, it’s felt like an increasing slog to watch some games. We’ve been lucky in a number of those following games ranging from playing 10 man Spurs, 10 man Palace and Chelsea somehow not scoring against us, as well as some individual brilliance like Sesko v Fulham and West Ham. The one outlier is the Villa win at OT. Lot of games on the knife edge until the final whistle like the Solskjaer days.
Crucially though, this coach has to be someone who can adapt to the squad and the league and stay ahead of opposition from a tactical standpoint. Ideally he has to play nice football too.
Under Carrick, it feels like we exploded out of the blocks against City and Arsenal when expectations were rock bottom. Since then, it’s felt like an increasing slog to watch some games. We’ve been lucky in a number of those following games ranging from playing 10 man Spurs, 10 man Palace and Chelsea somehow not scoring against us, as well as some individual brilliance like Sesko v Fulham and West Ham. The one outlier is the Villa win at OT. Lot of games on the knife edge until the final whistle like the Solskjaer days.
Iraola or Alonso and we could 100% get either one. When we were getting Amorim I was excited even though I hadn't seen too much of him as I thought his main attributes were playing youth and playing attacking football, it turns out none of those things were true so I don't buy into the "we can't have another hipster" because of Amorim, he was just a bad choice of hipster.
I'm a firm believer in that the team that scores the most goals will win the league where as it use to be "defence wins Championships" so I want a manager that attacks and score goals first and foremost and after watching a lot of both these mangers I know for a fact that they can, do and will continue to do that.
Iraola for example has had Huijsen, Rayan and Kroupi all first team regulars as teenagers the past two seasons. He's improved players to the point a club the size of Bournemouth is now selling its players to Real Madrid, PSG, City and Liverpool while Arsenal are also supposedly interested in Kroupi. He also seems like someone who would be open to a short contract of 2+1 as he hasn't stayed at any club very long and clearly backs himself to get an extension anyway. He's more akin to Kompany than an Amorim.
Alonso is more self explanatory.
Enrique is clearly a dream for everyone but we all know he's not going anywhere. He's not been at PSG very long and has everything he's ever wanted/needs to be successful there already. To top it off he even has the French climate that I'm sure he appreciates a lot more than most mangers as he's massively into surfing/triathlons/cycling etc and I can't imagine that's as enjoyable to partake in somewhere like this country as it is in France.
Alonso is nowhere near 100% "gettable" - if Slot gets the boot then he's almost certainly going to Liverpool, and even if Slot staysm I don't see a former Liverpool player of his stature ever coming to United
Isn't this just the way of the premier league now? Which teams are blowing anyone out of the water week after week? It just doesn't seem to happen this season as the bottom clubs close the distance to the top.
Of course he is. He's a young unemployed manager, if one of the biggest clubs in the world come in for you and pay you incredibly well he's going to think about it.
Liverpool are very aware of the trouble they have had bedding in their new signings and are still in with a chance of third so I'm not even convinced they will sack him anymore which doesn't leave him with many options but even if they did we could make an attractive pitch to bring him here instead.
He's Spanish and an ex Real Madrid player and just had to walk from there after seven months, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't let sentimentality dictate the future of his career going forward.
I've read a couple of interviews with Alonso and he doesn't strike me as particularly sentimental. I don't mean this as an insult per se - he comes across as genuinely smart and adaptable, but his approach to career (and society when they got onto those aspects) is 1-2-1 'European technocrat' who'd be in mid-to-upper management for some FinTech firm in Germany (or I guess Madrid) or minister for some centrist [ finance-friendly, socially-liberal & very pro-EU] party. Which sounds oddly specific, perhaps: but that's all to say that I don't think he has some great romantic attachment to managing Liverpool if a more immediate career opportunity presents itself.
Come again? We wouldn’t give Enrique a team bad enough to finish 15th.
We didn’t give Amorim a bad team either, yet he still managed to mess it up. He even had a better squad this season and, in half a season, only really showed he could win more than one game a month once.
The point I’m making is that it’s not easy to implement a manager’s style if the fundamentals aren’t already there in the squad. Yes, we could build that kind of team for Enrique—but it would cost significantly more than what it would take to continue on the path we currently are on. We aren’t ready for Enrique right now.
You said the league is weak, but all our teams qualified for the Champions League knockouts. On top of that, just like last season, a team fighting relegation could still make the Europa League final. So how “poor” is the league really?
I’ll admit, I thought Pep finished 4th in his first season, but the real issue was that he didn’t have the players he needed. Even after bringing in a new keeper and striker, on top of already having De Bruyne and David Silva, he still had to overhaul things again. Many of his first signings were quickly replaced in the second season, including bringing in two brand-new fullbacks. It was basically an “open heart surgery” rebuild. We don’t need something like this again. It means we are failing.
So I have to ask: why do so many people want to tear down what we’re currently building after we’ve made clear progress? There’s no real evidence that handing the reins to a manager to build is what we are ready for right now.
Good post.
One thing folks should consider as well is, that Enrique also wasn't always considered this supposed super coach. He's always done reasonably well I guess, but most people have only started putting him on that pedestal after his Euro win with Spain and his time at PSG of course. And especially his PSG tenure will have been helped massively by Luis Campos influence in terms of bringing in players like Vitinha, Kvaratskhelia etc.
I have said many time in this thread, that I think there are multiple managers out there right now, that can follow a similar trajectory, but that also already have a decent body of work as well. Which means they aren't a complete shot in the dark either.
-Nagelsmann: Coached three different teams already, plus the German national team now. After his spell there he is almost certain to take over at a big club again. Some people in this thread have been critical about his time at Bayern, but apart from being a bit of a hipster, I don't actually think he got that much wrong to be honest. He essentially just clashed with the egos of Hoeness and the other oldtimers, which will always get you the sack in the end.
I genuinely think this guy is primed to be the next big manager. Watch him go to Barcelona, Liverpool or Chelsea after he's done with Germany and be a real success.
-Iraola: If you want a Premier League proven manager, there he is. Plays a great brand of football, always on the front foot with loads of intensity. And all of that despite losing his best players every summer and sometimes even in January. I've seen people make comparisons to Thomas Frank, but I think these are somewhat misplaced. Frank for me was always in that Moyes bracket of midtable managers. They have their methods and those methods have a certain ceiling, which then won't necessarily translate to a club vying to actually win things. I don't get that impression with Iraola and I think his style is much more likely to scale up rather well. I also think he would work well in the system Ineos won't to operate the club under.
-Alonso: Not even 12 months ago, this guy might as well have been called Luis Enrique the way everyone was talking about him. Together with Rolfes he built a phenomal Leverkusen side, who practically steamrolled the league. Made even me watch some Bundesliga matches for once.
I frankly think Real Madrid were silly to give up on him so quickly and if Liverpool had any sense, they would've booted Slot out the door already and made sure to have Alonso in for next season by now.
He's still going to be among the very best managers in my opinion, as long as he chooses his next club a bit more wisely.
Other managers I can think of are of course Tuchel, who would be my number one choice. Maybe Valverde and Inzaghi even. All of these have managed big clubs before. And why not go and make a big play for Enrique right now? We're still a much bigger club than PSG. Show some ambition, slap a huge contract offer on the table and leave nothing to chance. With a real pitch of winning the league by 28'. Especially if Pep's gone this summer and we get our recruitment right over the next few windows, this could absolutely be achieveable. Imagine if we actually acted according to our status in world football for once. Not like some underdog, little football club, which can't make his mind up about what it can or cannot do.
Can I ask you if you go to games?
Ive been back and forward on this and I don't think the match going fans will have him has manager at all, the sound of the Stretford End shouting "You Scouse bastard" at him if it goes badly wrong would be something and I wouldn't put anything past that happening either
I am hoping for either 1 plus 1 or just a 2 year deal
Persuading him to hold back on signing anything when he has Qatari's leaning on him looks impossible. I get the point that @sp_cgb is making about acting like a big club, however just remember we are competing against another nation state when it comes to offers.
What's that got to do with hiring someone of the pedigree of Enrique? saying "We didn’t give Amorim a bad team either, yet he still managed to mess it up." is even phrased like Amorim is better than Enrique?? Also the main reason Amorim dropped us to 15th was because he wanted to play wingbacks with no wingbacks and gave up on the league to try and win the Europa I can't imagine any new manager would be doing those two things, when he was sacked he was only 3 pts off 4th.
I get that if someone wanted to come in and play a super technical style it might not be plain sailing but these aren't bums, replace Casemiro with Anderson and Dalot with Munoz and give him a team of Lammens, Dorgu, Martinez, Yoro, Munoz, Mainoo, Anderson, Cunha, Bruno, Amad and Mbeumo and I bet he could coach they almost straight away to be a pretty handy team, one capable of finishing 3rd in his first season. I remember De Zerbi going to Brighton and within a week he had Dunk standing on the ball to draw press at Anfield and had them playing brilliant attacking football against a Klopp Liverpool side to earn a 3-3 draw, it's what top coaches do.
Qualifying for the Champions league knockouts means nothing, how did they do after that? we just have loads of rich teams which means they can all afford to assemble big expensive squads that allows them to beat the smaller teams and reach the knockouts easily. Sporting Lisbon, Galatasaray, Atalanta, Bodo/Glimt all made the last 16 and that's ignoring the likes of Qarabag, Club Brugge and Olympiacos that made the knockouts.
Look at the players Forest have available to them and then look at their opponents, the other two semi finalist are Braga and Frieburg and the only player I have heard of is Ginter from their combined starting eleven's.
I genuinely think people underestimate the quality we have, it's not elite but it's no where near as bad as people make out. Look at the teams we put out and then look at what the other teams in the league put out, it's not that strong. Arsenal are starting a front three of Martinelli, Gyokeres and madueke tonight! Chelsea have been playing Garnacho and Delap the last few weeks, Liverpools best players are Ekitke, Salah, Isak and Wirtz and everybody has been calling the last three crap all season, Villa have had Sancho, Lindelof and Barkley in the team the last month or so and these are the best teams in the league!
My answer to this would be what would we be tearing down? The better transfers will continue as we have the new board in control of that now and in terms of play style and performances we have an interim manager that has come in and changed the formation back to a normal formation that the players are comfortable with and then had the players take advantage of the other teams implosions scraping quite a few underserved wins that will highly likely flip the other way next season.
If everything was exactly the same but it was Southgate in the dugout and not Carrick would you want to give him the job full time over a Conte, Iraola, Nagelmann etc?
I don't but we all know how fickle fans are, I'd be surprised if they wouldn't love for him to be successful and rub Liverpool fans noses in it (it's not like it's Gerrard/Carragher).
If it got so bad that they're shouting you "you Scouse bastard" then he's probably doing so bad that he would need to be sacked and given how slow we're at doing that it would probably be a positive thing anyway.
Is the league good or bad? Because saying it’s easy due to bigger squads, but then also saying Europa teams can’t compete with Forest, is kind of proving my point. The league is harder overall, there’s more quality throughout, and if you have a poor season you don’t just finish 3rd like a team such as Barcelona might in La Liga, you can easily end up out of Europe altogether.
My point about Amorim is more about fit than anything else. If you don’t have the right players for the system you’re trying to implement, it can fail — regardless of how good the coach is. Personally, I’d rather see a manager adapt to the players they have.
And that’s where my uncertainty with Enrique comes in. I don’t think most of us really know how adaptable he is in that sense. Maybe his time at Roma is an example of what can happen when things don’t quite fit, but it’s hard to say for sure.
We clearly have a very good team, you can see that from how quickly results improved after the managerial change. So the real question is: if you’re trying to progress, is it better to stick with a manager who’s already getting strong performances out of the current group, or bring in someone new who might/is a better coach in theory?
I don’t have an issue with going for the latter, but if you do, you need to make sure the squad actually suits what that manager wants to do.
And on the Southgate/Carrick point — that’s not really a fair comparison. They’re completely different profiles, so I don’t think that analogy really works. Unless it’s because they are both English?
This, even if he was available we wouldn't be his first choice destination. Real Madrid and City would because he would actually get the requisite investment to implement his ideas. We are about phased rebuilds because we are skint, no way he is leaving that PSG team for the pressure cooker that is United and it's recruitment issues.
I think that's a given, but to actually level up we'd need to replace our slow defenders so as to effectively play a high line.
There is a good debate to be had about Carrick's long term suitability but as things stand there is only a handful of coaches that are guaranteed to do better and they aren't gettable. Of course we could demand that we take Iraola and bank on his ability to scale his style up but I think having to play with Maguire, De Ligt or Martinez in a high line will give him a brain seizure. Maybe Maresca or steal the march on Liverpool and get Alonso but I don't think that's realistic.
Ineos need to think this through, there are real risks associated with Carrick. This style and performances aren't sustainable at all. But coaches who play the more expansive style we desire will need a better defense and midfield than what we currently have. The risk is that we try to mordenize style again, with a less experienced option but don't give him the 5 or six players needed and it blows up in our faces like it did with Ten Hag (he was at fault) and Amorim.
If I knew that we would have £300m to spend on players (2 CMs, LB, RB, RCB, LW), I'd be keen to take a risk on Iraola - he knows the league, we are halfway towards building a dynamic team and his style is scaleable for dominant football.
If we can't get the elite level coaches, mostly Ancelloti and Enrique, and it seems we can't, then I'd want Emery.
If we cannot get Emery, then may as well be Carrick on a year long deal.
If we cannot get Emery, then may as well be Carrick on a year long deal.
Tbh the only we Utd will have real success is to decide what they want us to be and actually stick to it.
I personally think that being a more front foot, technical team who plays protagonist football will still be the best way to win things over the next 10 years.
That will require recruitment and stick to that type of manager even if one fails and you need to replace them with another one.
If they want to play on the transition and defend deeper then fine but they just need to stop chopping and changing. I think our recruitment has improved and now the next step is to have an idea about what they want to be and stick to that.
My preference for that we aim to be a dominant, attacking and possession based team. So if it was my choice I'd sign a manager who has shown they can play that way, sign 2 midfielders at least and there will still be room to sign a couple other players I'd imagine. That would be my choice but we will see.
I think everyone prefers it too but some appreciate the fact that we aren't that team yet. Yes we have improved in recruitment under Ineos but remember it's them that also signed Ugarte and De Ligt.
The problem we have is that we always approach summers from a position of weakness because previous signings we would have made haven't worked out and need to be replaced prematurely. So we are always on the back foot, in an ideal world we'd have Sancho and Antony as our wide players supporting Rashford but none of them worked, we actually signed Antony to replace Sancho and both flopped. So the £70m spent on Mbuemo is the money we should have spent on other areas, same with Ugarte.
So we are never really ready to take the next step in our rebuild and thus we don't have the luxury to take a gamble on a relatively young manager with potential. Everytime we have done so we have fallen flat on our faces because this squad isn't ready for anything other than transitional football and we aren't ready to spend big to transform the squad instantly.
I also fear that Carrick's basic style will get found out next season because right now it can be argued that we are only 3rd because Chelsea, Liverpool, Newcastle and Villa have issues. If these teams level up we could find ourselves in Europa League places, if we standstill over the summer.
Why Emery? He was joint with city and in a title race a few months ago only to fade away and even let the likes of Liverpool who have been shocking overtake them. I think Villa is his level to be fair. We need to try and make a statement with either Enrique or Nagelsmann. Rivals will not fear us hiring Carrick, they’ll fear us if we have one of the other names.
You must be kidding naming Nagelsmann along with Enrique nobody would give a flying feck if we hire Nagelsmann let alone fear us .
Because it is Villa and he also has European football/etc in-between league games whereas we don't. I rate him as a manager. Two before him in that list, for me, after which, it would be Emery and then Carrick. After about three names, the three I mentioned, you may be able to add a fourth, it's all "meh" to me.
He’s a more exciting name then the likes of Carrick, Iraola
choo choo
Has there been many “prem proven” managers who have left one lower club to join a bigger club and been successful?
I don’t mean the question to scoff at Iraola as I quite like him, just genuinely curious.
I don’t mean the question to scoff at Iraola as I quite like him, just genuinely curious.
As good as we’ve been results wise as a whole under Carrick it’s clear that he’s very one dimensional and a bit of a ditherer if we’re on the back foot or losing, would the job be too big for Iraola ? We don’t know but what we do know is he’s certainly not one dimensional, PL proven, sets up brilliantly, has Bournemouth top of pressing stats in all of Europe, gets the most out of every single player and has Bournemouth looking likely despite losing so many top players.
Poch - Southampton to Spurs
Howe - Bournemouth to Newcastle
If we see the title as success then no. Usually the PL was won by managers who had won leagues elsewhere and where in their first PL job.
Like Iraola's work at Bournemouth. Think his game management is better and tactically he is better than Carrick
Sigh. We’ll be back struggling to make top 4 next year and everyone will still be insisting on the next hipster manager. Maybe we should be looking for one that has more than a 50% win record in the league?
Who do you want?
Who would have more than a 50% win record with Bournemouth?
Name a manager who's actually available this summer and not at the world cup. As Utd said they won't wait for any manager who's at the world cup.
How about the one that actually is getting results now? We’re a football club that should be aiming to be self reliant. We should be hiring our ex players as managers constantly like Barca/Ajax do. If this one doesn’t work, move on to the next - but have the confidence in our own club to hire from within. Not constantly look to the “next big thing” based on hype and getting a mid table club to punch slightly above its weight.
That's why football clubs employ analysts rather than going with the gut (Barca can do it because they've got the most poductive youth set-up in the world, have been gifted generational talents at various junctures....and still ended up in a financial hole despite having chairmen who invest on top of club income rather than being party to parasitism ).
Players might buy into 'prestige' players, but that didn't help Lampard at Everton or his 2nd spell at Chelsea (despite being bright, a serial winner, having previous managerial experience, etc.) as one example. Recalls the Sacchi quote about 'racehorses' and 'jockeys': Mourinho was a very obscure figure in Portugal as a player ( Wenger likewise in France before he built his career; even Klopp in Germany to a large degree).
Meanwhile, clubs can over-perform their xg etc and get away with it for a while before it hits (Villa should have already won the league if a run of wins is supposed to stand in for expected performance across a whole season).
There are some clear positive signs with MC but also red-flags, even if we discount Boro and what Boro fans concluded about him. Red flags ranging from doubts about in-game problem solving and calculated risk-taking, through to the narrative about training being 'shorter' which was supposed to be helping drive the early victories, only for people to notice a drop in player intensity in subsequent games, less structure in attacks, the team getting cut through more easily (at times recalling ETH). Amorim made numerous mistakes but there's reporting about how many good things he did behind the scenes rather than it all being recriminations: on the flipside, Carrick can achieve positive results and raise motivation short-term but in this scenario he could be making different kinds of mistakes which give the team even less of a platform going forward. . Players might respond to a new coach because he lets them off the leash for a bit, but we've seen a looser structure start to crack after a while. In this case, United's performances have been patchy since game 4 or so.
Not a partisan of Iraola, and there's the Thomas Frank precedent (Frank, like Amorim, was desperately unlucky in many regards, but obviously something went wrong beyond injuries and players failing in clutch moments), but he does have a body of work where he's adapted a side with modest resources to playing proactive football, is tactically fluid, a 'training-ground' guy and improver of players etc. They should certainly interview him.
There are red flags with the likes of Iriola as well it’s just that you don’t see them when they’re not your manager.
He's been my choice for a while now.
It would be a gamble, but one worth taking. He's worked miracles at Bournemouth this season and kept them playing exciting football despite having to sell most of their best players!
- Status