Next permanent manager | Poll updated

Who should be the next permanent manager?

  • Luis Enrique

    Votes: 113 7.4%

  • Erik ten Hag

    Votes: 1,300 84.7%

  • Julen Lopetegui

    Votes: 10 0.7%

  • Mauricio Pochettino

    Votes: 79 5.1%

  • None of the above

    Votes: 32 2.1%
  • Total voters
    1,534
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Shame Hansi Flick & Enrique are both currently managing national teams otherwise that's two solid candidates right there. Based on what we can get my vote still goes to Ten Hag but it seems inevitable now that Poch will be the one. I do like Poch but at the same time I'm deeply worried it will be an awful fit.
 
Berbaclass said:
Brilliant :lol:
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Viktoria Backnang is a village club in Kreisliga, that's literally the lowest organized division in the whole German football pyramid. The guy spent the 80s coaching in double digit division village clubs (no exaggeration) but apparently developed the whole concept of modern football during that time. It's utterly bizarre, like from a comedy.
 
dwd said:
Who do you want? I can’t quite work it out. Not a fan of Poch?
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This one wasn't about Pochettino. My favorite option would be ten Hag but I'm fine with Pochettino, the stories around his legendary achievements irks me though and I don't think that he is anything else than a "secure top 4" manager, so I suspect that we will be looking for his replacement pretty quickly.
 
Berbaclass said:
It’s quite clearly not all nonsense though.
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A large part is nonsense. One interesting mention from RMC was that some of the name that you hear come from agents plugging their clients, they mentioned the likes of Lopetegui as an example. Journalists know it and still sell readers a different story.
 
JPRouve said:
A large part is nonsense. One interesting mention from RMC was that some of the name that you hear come from agents plugging their clients, they mentioned the likes of Lopetegui as an example. Journalists know it and still sell readers a different story.
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I believe Simon Stone personally. I think this is legitimate. Time will tell.
 
Is there a big reason i am missing that Bielsa isn't among the names? I am probably missing something very obvious but he is a well respected manager, right?
 
If we will decide to stay till the summer the. We should fully go for Hag but it seems that SAF and board want Poch.
 
JPRouve said:
A large part is nonsense. One interesting mention from RMC was that some of the name that you hear come from agents plugging their clients, they mentioned the likes of Lopetegui as an example. Journalists know it and still sell readers a different story.
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The zidane bit could be. Pochetino being willing to join now isn’t nonsense - far too much smoke from reliable sources. Whether PSG will allow that remains to be seen but I’m not sure I’d ever want an unhappy manager in charge.
 
JPRouve said:
Laurens knows nothing he is a hack and Bouhafsi only knows what RMC knows and left.
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Hack ? :lol:. He is definitely not a hack. Julien is close to psg, knows Leonardo and is a psg fan on top of that. He is also well connected to psg players and staff too. He even gets invited to parties thrown by neymar etc.
 
Devil may care said:
Ronaldo's lack of workrate is going to be an issue for any manager, on top of that we can't appoint a manager based on what suits him as he's only here for one more season. My preference would be to get an old stager in as interim and let Ten Hag start in the summer.



Yes, for starters it could be completely made up, and I'm sure loads of managers would quit their current gig to cone to United, he'd hardly be unique in that regard.



So the 3 stooges would be in charge until then? We can kiss goodbye to top 4 if this is the plan.
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I can't understand why Ronaldo's work rate is an issue. Check out the lady bastards who play left and right forward.
 
We might have had this done on the international break with more time and no games. I find it hard to get any permanent good manager before summer.
 
Berbaclass said:
Not really a rumour at this point. Poch wants out. We want Poch.
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That part was believable but it doesn't really bring us anywhere, the question is whether he would move during the season and whether he would notify PSG. It's essentially scenario than this summer with Tottenham.
 
Would not be surprised to see Ragnick take over as interim and Poch take over in the Summer (if we can’t get Poch over the line before then)
 
JPRouve said:
That part was believable but it doesn't really bring us anywhere, the question is whether he would move during the season and whether he would notify PSG. It's essentially scenario than this summer with Tottenham.
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This has been established by multiple sources now.
 
darko said:
I can't understand why Ronaldo's work rate is an issue. Check out the lady bastards who play left and right forward.
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The young wide players can be coached into working for tne team, it's been done plenty of times, a 36 year old Ronaldo is pretty much going to be a passanger when we don't have the ball no matter who is coaching.
 
Devil may care said:
The young wide players can be coached into working for tne team, it's been done plenty of times, a 36 year old Ronaldo is pretty much going to be a passanger when we don't have the ball no matter who is coaching.
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He won't be a pressing forward, but he can certainly cut passing lanes and be part of a larger defensive unit. A decent manager would find a way to utilise him properly.
 
Wish the board would say they’re not interested in Rodgers.
 
I was in the Ten Hag camp, but if you actually look at it, Poch is the best choice for the squad that we have, especially if we want to win sooner rather than later.

Poch was my second choice, but I’m all aboard him getting the job now, ideally asap. Rodgers would be a total disaster at this club so the sooner my worries of that coming true end the better for my mental health.
 
Laurencio said:
He won't be a pressing forward, but he can certainly cut passing lanes and be part of a larger defensive unit. A decent manager would find a way to utilise him properly.
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I doubt it, he's looked after himself meticulously, his game for a while now has been about only moving when he can get on the end of something, he's not going to expell energy cutting off passing lanes.
 
Looks like it could be Blanc as interim. I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to that. Priority should be to secure CL football.

Poch, Hag or Rangnick as the long term appointment.

Need to clear out some players and bring in:

RB: Trippier or Aarons
CDM/DLP: Rice, Bissouma, Palhinha or Neves

All this could be done with little to no net spend while getting the club right back on track.
 
JPRouve said:
This one wasn't about Pochettino. My favorite option would be ten Hag but I'm fine with Pochettino, the stories around his legendary achievements irks me though and I don't think that he is anything else than a "secure top 4" manager, so I suspect that we will be looking for his replacement pretty quickly.
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I think the experience he would have had in France coupled with a footballing bring would bring him back an updated manager. He's only managed two trophies there, but this season he has opened a huge gap to second. I think and i hope that creates a new mentality. Ten Haag is my favourite too bit I think Poch could come and do a job, and do it well.
 
Henrik Larsson said:
Yeah, I was just trying to paint a picture of how the success of Ajax came from having a consistent structure throughout the club and gradually improving on that, while keeping the same philosophy over a period of almost ten years. Summed up it would look something like this

- 2009: Ajax were in a bad financial situation and had parted ways with their tradions up until Martin Jol. Then came the so called Cruijffian revolution, including a salary cap and a limited transfer budget, and the re-focus on homegrown players instead of overpaying for mediocre dross, a clear football philosophy with the classic 4-3-3 system which Jol didn't use, etc.

This happened under Frank de Boer, obviously he failed internationally as a manager, but at Ajax he did a wonderful job. They hadn't won the league in 7(!) years when he joined, but turned that around instantly by winning the league four times in a row. All while using mostly academy players and very cheap transfers because of the salary and budget cap, playing typical Ajax style possesion based football. This created a massive budget surplus (1st place led to direct CL group phase qualification four years in a row), about 100 million euro. Also helped by selling guys like Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Eriksen and Daley Blind.

There were some good results in Europe too under De Boer (beating Barca at home in the CL, finishing 3rd in a group with Real, Dortmund and City, knocking City who fisnished 4th in the group completely out of European football that year). But it wasn't an actual good run to a final or semi-final, and they had some very bad European performances as well.

- 2016: Peter Bosz took over and had a dramatic start, with those weird CL qualifiers at the start of the season.They got sent back to the Europa League, so the people in charge including Overmars decided to change the salary and budget cap to spend a little of the money they saved up and bought Ziyech, the best player in the Eredvisie at that time for 10 million, which was their biggest transfer in years. What followed was that first stand-out season in 21 years in Europe, leading to the EL final against United, which they considered a massive success at Ajax and proof their philosophy was working. But the squad was young and small, so they didn't win the domestic league that year, hindered by those intense Thursday night games. Bosz was also poached by Dortmund and decided to go for it, seeing it as a unique chance.

- 2017: They replaced Bosz with another bald Cruijff/Van Gaal/Guardiola adept called Marcel Keijzer, results weren't great so he got sacked after 6 monhts.

- 2018: another bald Cruijf/Guardiola adept, Erik ten Hag, was brought in. First six monhts weren't great, fans were going wild because of the lack of results despite having so much money in the bank.

So they took it a step further and made the two transfers that were absolutely crucial for their success of the last 3-4 years, by signing Blind and Tadic for about 30 million euro. Massive transfer fees compared to the 7 years previous, but those two guys brought in quality and also the maturity needed. Blind is known of course, Tadic I feel is extremely underrated (guy finished top 5 assists every year at Southampton and was brilliant in Holland before that). He and Memphis have been the most naturally talented Eredivsie forwards of the last decade, excluding Suarez.

Anyway, in combination with the young and talented batch that came through under Peter Bosz with De Ligt, De Jong, Onana, Van de Beek, and also very much the great transfers of players like Ziyech, Tagliafico, they had a team that had a remarkable run the CL, making the semi's in 2019. Which again created a massive budget surplus.

They won the league comfortably in Ten Hag's second full season, but struggled a bit in Europe, getting knocked out the CL by Atalanta in the group phase, and then knocked out the EL by AS Roma. So Ten Hag and Overmars both felt they needed to bring in more players to create good squad depth, they made more big transfers like buying Haller from West Ham for a record amount, also poaching Feyenoord's best player Steven Berghuis for 7 million last summer.

And now this season things are looking great again internationally. Though in the league, Feyenoord is putting in the best pound for pound performances at the moment, but in terms of quality available and in depth options Ajax has by far the best squad and they're favourites to win it. Playing a very exciting style perfectly implemented by Ten Hag.


Random things that deserve to be mentioned:

Marc Overmars became the DoF at Ajax in 2012. He deserves all the credit in the world for their fantastic, gradually improving, transfer strategy over the years. He was also personally involved with scouting a teenage Frenkie de Jong, who was brought in for peanuts and sold with 70+ million profit. It's not like all his transfers were perfect, but he's both sold and brought in such a tremendous amount of good players over the years.

Edwin van der Sar started as director of marketing at Ajax in 2012, just like Overmars and as a part of that Cruijffian revolution in the model of Bayern München where a club should be run by competent former players. He was trained over the years to take over as CEO which he did in 2016.

Overmars and Ten Hag seem to have a great click, so if I were in charge of a club I'd get them both as a package deal. And since it's United where VDS has a history, I can't blame people for getting enthusiastic about brining in all three of them.

Since this is the next permanent manager, the last thing I'm going to say is that Erik ten Hag looks like an excellent coach, in this specific Ajax structure. His stock is very high, and deservedly so because Ajax had some stellar achievements under him. But rating just him as a coach, outside of this specific Ajax structure, I do not see what makes him more special than someone like Peter Bosz, or Arne Slot, or even Giovanni van Bronckhorst who just took the Rangers job.

So would I want to see him as a United coach? Sure, but if we don't bring in guys like Overmars and VDS or others of that calibre that are a great match with his vision as a coach, I'm literally not sure what he's supposed to do at United. He'll implement his style, maybe it'll work for while, maybe he has no great chemistry with the squad. I really think we need to do a reboot as a club and plan for the next 5-10 years just like Ajax did in 2010.
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Nice post! Your last paragraph is my concern with Ten Hag and I said similar in the Poch thread.

The potential of either managers is not in question imo, it's who suits our squad/board the most and who can be afforded the leeway when things goes wrong and who has the fortune of things falling into place for their preferred approach? Whether that's the system of the playing indentity they want to instill or how things go on or off the training pitch etc.
 
BlueHaze said:
Why am I for the past 3 months constantly hearing Ragnick's name being thrown around? What has he ever done that would suggests he would be decent even for an interim role? Just feels like a name being brought up by social media kids.
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Sound like you a the social media kids know more about football than you :) . If you don’t know who Ragnick then you must be new to football which is more understandable.
 
Did we not hold discussions with Poch before sacking Ole?
We announced an interim and Poch according to the media is ready to join now.
 
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