It wouldn't surprise me if the players prefer Poch. They'll be aware of the great job he did at Spurs and will be far more familiar with how his teams play than ETH's. I still think Poch did a brilliant job at Spurs and an impressive job at Southampton before that, and despite thinking ETH has done a great job with Ajax, he's far from the guaranteed success that most seem to think. The difference between managing Ajax and Manchester United is absolutely massive. The expectations and ego handling is on a completely different level, not just at Utd but any top club. Like it or not, if the players already have doubts from the start the chances of him succeeding are significantly lower than a manager who the players fully believe in.
ETH has never had experience managing a club with superstars and the most pressure he's had from the fans is simply getting Ajax to win the Eredivisie. Everything else has been a bonus, and he's done brilliantly but without any real pressure it's hard to judge how he would handle the step up to a job that basically requires a full restructure of the team and club in general. Poch getting experience working with major egos at PSG will probably be a good thing in the long term, even if it hasn't gone as well as he would have liked at PSG. He also dealt with a couple stars while at Spurs and the players always seemed to be fully behind Poch until his final season. There was also a significant amount of expectation and pressure on Poch towards the end of his time with Spurs largely down to the success he himself had created. When they didn't win the PL or CL after coming so close the fans were very unhappy despite the fact that they realistically never should have been competing for either in the first place.
Realistically Poch has been our number 1 target for a long time now, and whether you value the Board's opinion or not, this has been a well thought out plan for ages and it was the decision to keep Ole that changed everything. I would prefer us to stick to a longer term plan considering how all of our short term decisions have been going, and I have no doubt if we got ETH it would be a completely short term decision that has come about based on Ajax's performances in CL this season and fan clamour. I doubt the Board even knew who ETH was 1 year ago. I'm sure ETH will do very well somewhere else but it would be much easier for him to settle into a club like City where everything is already in place than Utd or Barcelona where it's a complete mess.
