It is obvious that, unfortunately, OGS is not the manager that can bring the club new trophies or make us title challengers. And I say this not only because of the results he achieved so far at MU, but bearing in mind his whole career as manager.
However, what I do not understand why so much of the people posting here are so fond of the idea that Pochettino should be our next manager. The way I see things, an ambitious club like us (or any other ambitious club), in order to be successful, must employ one of the following 2 manager types:
1. An established manager, that has a very good track record in winning trophies, with the condition of sharing the club's philosophy
2. A young, promising manager, at the beginning of his career, preferably from within the club or with past connections with the club
After SAF retired, we made a lot of mistakes in appointing new managers and I feel we will keep making them if we do not follow the above criteria. Moyes was a good manager for mid-table teams, with no trophies under his name and no previous experience in managing a bigger team before we employed him. Van Gaal was by far our best manager since SAF, but his unwillingness to adapt to PL football, resulting in very dull matches, cost him his job. Mourinho was never going to fit our club philosophy, and, although he was (and is) very accomplished, his conflictual nature was always going to generate big problems. Furthermore, his career was declining when we hired him, and the squad he inherited was not built for his style of play (his best performances came at Chelsea and Inter, where he had very defensively solid teams and the style of play was not so important for the fans).
Now we hired OGS, whose best achievements as manager are 2 titles with Molde, back in 2011 and 2012, which is way too little to deserve the MU manager job. But, even if we sack him, under no circumstances should we look to appoint Pochettino, a manager who has won nothing in a 10 year old career. In my opinion, our best current option is by far Laurent Blanc: he has already won 4 French titles (including one with Bordeaux, where he built a very exciting team), he is a former United player, he is known to promote youngsters and his teams play an exciting brand of football and are well drilled.
If we look at our main PL competitors, all of them currently currently have correct choices as managers:
- Liverpool hired Klopp, who had won titles with Dortmund and immediately imposed his desired style of play
- City hired Guardiola with the desire to dominate English and european football. Before they hired him, they invested heavily in the club academy (bringing former Guardiola associate Begiristain) and they had Pellegrini as manager, who also employes a possession style of football.
- Chelsea have in Lampard the perfect choice, given their transfer ban, Lampard's past as a Chelsea player and especially his good results with Derby
Like the managers above improved those clubs, I really think Blanc would be a good fit for us, much better than Pochettino or other currently available managers. With him as manager, I see us again as title challengers in 1-2 years, while also playing offensive, exciting football again.
