@Invictus thanks for the reply, you raise some excellent points that I will not contest - primarily that of Giggs' personality. All I can say with regard to that is again - those inside the club will have a far better and more accurate judgement on the character of Ryan Giggs. The very fact that he has been spoken of by LVG as a potential successor, leads me to believe that he cannot be seen as totally 'gormless' as you put it, in a managerial sense.
I also believe that more than one type of person can be successful as a manager. I worked under approximately 12 managers over 5 years in my last job - I freely accept that it is a flawed comparison as a phone shop is not like one of the biggest football clubs in the world, but over time it was easy to see how different styles of leadership could work (or not), with different employees. Nonetheless, I agree that in his career to date, Giggs has not shown himself to be a charismatic leader of men in the same mould as a Guardiola. Giggs does however command the authority and respect of the players at the club (I know you dont really value this argument) due to his history and achievements. This does not mean he is automatically a great leader, but it means that he would not - in my opinion - fall into the same pitfalls as Moyes for instance.
Again though, if the club is apparently grooming him to take over from LVG, and if he
does, then I would expect that to be on the back of those within the club judging him to be an appropriate fit in terms of personality et al.
Yeah, wrt to his personality, perhaps there's something lost in transition. Maybe he's a better people's person behind closed doors, so it was certainly a guesstimate on my part. However, I do believe that managing a group of footballers is way different than equivalent positions in almost every other regular of corporate job. One of the reasons why it's comparatively harder is that you have to deal with employees who are all really wealthy and successful in their profession (something like 0.001% or lesser amateur footballers starting out could even make the club).
There aren't a lot of comparable leadership roles to that. You have to be in close proximity, and interact with every employee, get your message across day in and day out. I'm fairly certain most CEOs don't leave their corporate throne to interact with the hoi polloi. At times, the manager has to rely on raw emotions to get the best out of players in match-day situations. You have to get articulate what you're thinking concisely, draw up new tactics in accordance to the opposition, deal with the media, keep tabs on the younger players, scout potential targets, and so forth. It's a taxing, draining job that requires sharp focus, and the ability to juggle several little details at the same time, to go with obvious leadership ability. The players will respect him to an extent because of his stature of the club, but a couple of mis-steps, and that will have an adverse snowball effect.
Also, I'm fairly certain Van Gaal is merely toeing the company line, and his words shouldn't be taken at face value. He's mental no doubt, but even he is not going to openly criticize a fellow coach, that must be borne in mind. Suppose Giggs wasn't up to the job. Would one expect Louis to conduct a fair appraisal in front of the press? I don't think so to be honest. There's more to it than meets the eye, and I honestly can't gauge how serious the club really are with regard to Giggs' managerial future. But if they have learnt their lessons from the Moyes debacle, then they must conduct a thorough evaluation and cast any romantic notions aside, apart from putting more value on experience in European competitions.
The names you are suggesting as our candidates are Guardiola and Ancelotti primarily - both excellent, proven managers. Ancelotti however, has only on one occasion remained at a club longer than two seasons, and this was his time at Milan. It can be argued that on most occasions he was moving to a bigger club, but regardless he does not have a track record for building great squads or promoting youth - that his last three jobs have been Chelsea, PSG and Real Madrid tell us this if nothing else. At this point we start to touch back on the "United is unique, United is different" argument - but jokes aside, I cant think of too many inside the club (or the fans) who would be happy for us to go the way of some of those clubs, replacing manager every 1-2 years and spending enormous amounts of money year on year (obviously LVGs tenure thus far has featured a lot of spending, but as you rightly said his "transition job" was virtually unprecedented). That the Glazers are in charge supports this, I feel.
I digress a bit when it comes to Ancelotti. To address the argument of him not staying at a club for the long haul, he started off with Reggiana and got them promoted to Serie A in the first year. Decent accomplishment which prompted a move to Parma where he finished 2nd in the league in his very first season. That led to a move to Juventus. One might argue that should have stuck by Parma, but Juventus is the biggest club in Italy, and Lippi was stepping down. It was like going from Tottenham to Manchester United, so his motivations are distinctly understandable. Got fired by Juventus in just his second year after finishing 2nd in the Seria A, and was snapped up by Milan.
Now the thing to factor in with Milan is that Ancelotti was just a coaching figure head. All the major decisions were made by Berlusconi and Galliani, including most of the transfers. And the Milan he inherited wasn't the team they were going to become under Ancelotti's stewardship. They had finished 6th in the Serie A before Anceotti was brought in, changed 3 managers, and had an ageing squad. Just like Van Gaal chopped and changed a lot in his first couple of seasons at United, Ancelotti had to integrate Pirlo, Nesta, Cafu, Seedorf, Tomasson, Inzaghi, Rui Costa, etc in his first 2 or 3 seasons. Despite all the turmoil, he won the European Cup in just his second year, and continued to have a good degree of success until Berlusconi stopped spending.
PSG again, they had a rubbish squad before Ancelotti's appointment. Matuidi, Thiago, Alex, Motta, Lucas, Ibrahimovic, Pastore, Sirigu, Maxwell all signed in the space of just over one year. And by the time he left, PSG were entrenched as one of the strongest clubs in European competitions. All of that shows that he can build great squads. He built a great squad at Milan, and won the Champions League within 2 seasons. Similar with PSG, where he integrated all those players, and firmly put his stamp on the team.
As for the youth argument, we must bear in mind that Serie A clubs are traditionally very orthodox when it comes to young players. They will let them mature until they are in their early 20s, loan them out en masse, and will generally prefer more experienced heads. That's part of a subculture, and under Berlusconi and Galliani, Ancelotti wasn't going to change that. Plus, youth development and promotion takes time. Most new managers take a couple of seasons to shape the first team squad, and then pick out gems from the academy. That's usually how it works, and Ancelotti never really got a chance to bring a lot of young players through. He tried with the Milan Primavera, he tried to bring players through, but by and large the quality wasn't there. Those that were good enough (our friend Darmian got his league debut for Milan under Carlo) were superseded by more experienced players, and shipped out by the upper management. Even then, Ancelotti did give ample chances to a 21 year old Kaka, Pato, Verratti at PSG, Varane and to an extent Isco and Carvajal at Madrid, so the cupboard isn't exactly dry. If the players are good enough, he isn't going to stand in their way.
I'm fairly certain that someone like Ancelotti would thrive at United. He doesn't confront the upper management, gets the best out of whatever players he has, delivers instant success, can use different setups like Fergie instead of relying on a particular 'system', does well in the Champions League, and comes across as a genuinely nice person. Infact, I think he might be the closest manager right now as far as his pragmaticism goes when compared with Fergie. No wonder the club made a hard push for him when the previous manager was let go.
