There is a joke doing the rounds on social media suggesting that Manchester United would be best served giving their manager’s job to a succession of former players on a rotational, short-term basis. I would pay to watch a Cristiano Ronaldo United team, for sure. He would pick himself, obviously.
They do to tend to do rather well, United’s alumni caretakers, and that’s the point. Between them, Ryan Giggs (post David Moyes in 2014), Michael Carrick (post Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in 2021) and now Ruud van Nistelrooy have a managerial win percentage of more than 60 per cent. That’s higher than Sir Alex Ferguson. So as long as they never give it to Gary Neville they should be okay.
More seriously, the role of the caretaker is a strange one and, despite Frank Lampard’s efforts to buck the trend at Chelsea last season, it’s pretty hard to mess it up. Win some games and your status as a club favourite is underlined. Lose and it’s because of the rubbish players you were left by the previous bloke.
Van Nistelrooy, then, is the latest to tread that hallowed patch of ground down in front of the directors’ box at Old Trafford. Like Carrick against Villarreal almost three years ago, the former United striker went full-on suited and booted as United trounced Leicester reserves on Wednesday night. Giggs, after a couple of days of speculation (yes, really, and I was part of it) went for the tracksuit a decade or so ago.
And none of this is really important until it comes to the part when United’s new long-term manager Ruben Amorim walks through the door at the other side of the international break to take control of the club’s future. And then it is important because Van Nistelrooy could feasibly have three more victories under his belt by then, from home games against Chelsea, PAOK Salonika and Leicester again, and it will be up to Amorim to decide what to do with him.
Ruben Amorim must make one big move as soon as he becomes Manchester United manager
Ruud van Nistelrooy became the latest Man United legend to succeed in his first match
Ryan Giggs (left) and Michael Carrick (right) also prospered well during their interim spells
Amorim should thank Van Nistelrooy but ultimately tell him to close the door on his way out
It won’t be an easy call. Van Nistelrooy is popular at Old Trafford and will be even more so if he begins to wipe away the memory of the Erik ten Hag era with a few goals and victories. But the truth is that Amorim should not feel he needs him and, as such, should thank him and ask him to close the door on his way out.
This very notion will automatically offend the sensitivities of many rank and file United fans.
You can’t treat a club a legend this way! Well, actually you can.
He knows the club! Really? He last played for United in 2006 and the version of the club he has been familiar with while recently working with Ten Hag has been one of escalating failure.
So it’s all hogwash, really. Sentimental irrelevance. The hard truth is that if Amorim is to become the first manager to succeed at United since Ferguson stepped away, he will need to rebuild its football mechanisms from the ground up and in his own image.
Squad, playing style, culture. It all needs to change and if Amorim feels he really needs a one-time United goal scorer who he doesn’t know and whose own coaching pedigree is limited then he probably isn’t the right man for the big job in the first place.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his Ineos team could try to impose Van Nistelrooy on Amorim. Clubs have done that before. But that would be a dumb move. The need for a new start is as clear as day. If Van Nistelrooy’s presence – or merely the absence of Ten Hag, whichever way you wish to look at it – gives United a jolt over coming games then it’s certainly overdue. But it should have absolutely no bearing on the make-up of Amorim’s staff going forward.
Van Nistelrooy took the reins after Erik ten Hag was sacked by Man United on Monday morning
The Sporting boss will need to rebuild Man United’s football mechanisms from the ground up
Amorim and Ten Hag shake hands after Ajax’s Champions League clash with Sporting in 2021
The current Sporting Lisbon manager has already told Ratcliffe and his board that he wishes to bring four coaches and a sports scientist with him and the chances are that they will be the most important signings of his early weeks and months in Manchester.
The importance of the right number two is particularly significant in a modern Premier League environment that sees the demands on a manager’s time increase in scale and maddening variety with each passing season.
At other big English clubs managers such as Pep Guardiola, Unai Emery, Enzo Maresca, Eddie Howe and Mikel Arteta all have men by their side who they know from previous lives or, more often, previous jobs.
Football clubs are dangerous places where it’s necessary to manage up as well as down. It’s not always about the football. It can be about politics, too.
Particularly when the tide turns, who would you prefer to have standing by your side or right behind you? Someone you know and trust like your brother or a chap who once scored a bundle of goals in the glory days and has his name on banners on the Stretford End?
None of this is to denigrate Van Nistelrooy, who by all accounts has gone about his work diligently and honestly since being hired as part of a wholly ineffectual coaching revamp undertaken by Ineos when they chose not to sack Ten Hag last May.
It’s not about who he is, really. More what he represents. United’s coaching set up has proved itself as jumbled and dysfunctional as the playing squad in recent times and the club must now allow their new manager to build a new future free from meaningless and sentimental ties to the past.
The 5-2 victory over Leicester brought smiles back to the faces of Manchester United’s players
But Amorim will be forgiven for wanting a new team behind him – and not Van Nistelrooy
When the going gets tough, Amorim will need a coaching team there who will stand by his side
Travel discounts should only Bee the beginning
Brentford will offer their supporters a 20 per cent discount on train travel for all games outside of London this season, which is marvellous.
If they can get the trains to run on time, clean the loos and fix the WIFI while they are at it, that would be equally fabulous.
Yes, Avanti West Coast, this is about you.
Rodri’s Ballon d’Or should be celebrated
Congratulations to Manchester City midfielder Rodri on his Ballon d’Or triumph, a win for all those people out there who actually watch and understand football.
Defensive-minded players never win the Ballon d’Or. They just don’t. Two defenders have actually done so in its 68-year-history and one of those was Franz Beckenbauer, who wasn’t really a defender at all.
So Rodri’s success should be viewed as what it is. One against the head and we hope that more will follow.
Man City star Rodri should receive nothing but congratulations after his Ballon d’Or triumph
Only two defenders have won the award in its 68-year-history, including Franz Beckenbauer (pictured as a backdrop) – who wasn’t really one at all
Wenger is not the man to fix player welfare
Arsene Wenger’s most memorable contribution to football discourse since he hitched his wagon to FIFA’s gravy train a few years back was to suggest replacing throw-ins with kick-ins. Strangely, that one never got very far.
Now – almost as though FIFA don’t really know what to do with him – the former Arsenal manager has been appointed head of their new task force on player welfare and burn out. Nice idea but given Wenger once advocated hosting the World Cup every two years, we should not hold our breath.
People like Wenger will never really rest until football is being played every single day and twice on a Wednesday. As such he will never, ever recommend that we play less of it and this, of course, is the only medicine our game really needs.
This appointment is the equivalent of asking Donald Trump to head up a committee to tackle climate change.
Tonali isn’t clicking at Newcastle
Much fuss about Sandro Tonali while the Newcastle midfielder served his ten-month betting ban but less of it beforehand and indeed now that he is back playing for Eddie Howe’s team.
He’s a neat and tidy footballer but where the Italian fits into a Premier League midfield is proving increasingly harder to fathom.
Sandro Tonali is a neat and tidy footballer but he just isn’t slotting in to Newcastle’s midfield
Constrained by Premier League spending rules and with rumours of waning interest by their Saudi owners, Newcastle literally cannot afford to make many mistakes in the transfer market.
Tonali, who cost £55m in the summer of 2023, is beginning to feel like one.
