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DON'T BOTCH POCH
Pochettino getting axed now would be great for Man Utd – despite this shambles of a club not knowing what to do with him
MANCHESTER UNITED need to make a decision on who will be the new manager - NOW.
And it would be a big help if Mauricio Pochettino was sacked by PSG – as seems increasingly likely – as soon as possible.
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For that scenario would at last help the Old Trafford hierarchy make up their minds one way or another on whether they do in fact want him as Ralf Rangnick’s successor.
Yet no matter who comes in next, and Erik ten Hag, Graham Potter, Carlo Ancelotti and Ralph Hasenhuttl have all been mentioned, a game plan has to be in place for the new man.
And right now there isn’t one.
It’s not news that the United squad has to be torn apart and re–built.
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Sunday’s contemptuous derby win by Manchester City only shines more light on what has been blindingly obvious for far longer than this season
That 4-1 loss was just another chapter in the decline of a club that has been going to pot throughout the near – nine years since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
A staggering £1.1BN has been spent trying to fix things.
So much of it has been wasted. United’s transfer business, the whole recruitment policy, has been scatter-gun and scatter-brained.
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Such as the brilliant idea of bringing back Cristiano Ronaldo just when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer looked like he might have something going at the start of the season.
The romance of that return has turned into bitterness, finger-pointing, and bitchiness.
And Solskjaer, almost certainly told that CR7 was being signed whether he liked it or not, lost his job because of it.
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That Ronaldo will be gone for good at the end of the season is certain.
For no new manager would want to have to deal with such a drama queen raging - not only with the club but against the ravages of time.
Plenty more will follow; Paul Pogba, Edinson Cavani who has already taken his ball home, Jesse Lingard will all leave on free transfers.
Anthony Martial might come back from his loan spell with Sevilla, as will Donny van de Beek from Everton but both will go to the highest bidder.
Eric Bailly, Phil Jones, Axel Tuanzebe, Dean Henderson and maybe even Aaron Wan-Bissaka will also be candidates for the exit door if anybody will have them.
None of that is rocket science.
What does appears to be, however, is planning for the future – who to make the new manager, who he sees as transfer targets, how he wants United to play.
If all of that is not decided until he comes in then Rangnick’s successor will hit the wall.
The summer market is already hotting up.
Liverpool want Borussia Dortmund’s megastar midfielder of the future Jude Bellingham - and West Ham winger Jarrod Bowen.
Pep Guardiola has told City that he needs a proper striker so Tottenham and England captain Harry Kane will be the No 1 target as he was last year.
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At Arsenal Mikel Arteta has made no secret of his desire to land Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Bellingham’s goal machine teammate Erling Haaland is the ultimate prize and City, as well as Barcelona, who are in the running for him.
United, other than their continued interest in West Ham and England holding midfielder Declan Rice, are not being mentioned in terms of any of the rest.
Its not like they just need a couple of players to sort things out – or, indeed, patch things over has has been the case year after year since Fergie headed upstairs.
They need a striker, at least one centre-back, a holding midfielder, a hod carrier to do the dirty work to allow Bruno Fernandes to regain centre stage from Ronaldo - and a right-back who can create - along with another goalkeeper.
That’s just for starters.
But the chances are that by the time the new manager moves in, all the big moves for all the big players who might be available this summer will have been made. Plans will be in place, in fact.
To change that all it would take once a decision on a new manager is made, would be for the likes of football director John Murtough or Rangnick who will take up an advisory role, to have a quiet word.
Find out who would be on the next manager's wish list and get things moving.
For right now the United squad is not fit for purpose and that is not Ronaldo’s fault.
He simply became the catalyst for an implosion that was already on the cards and now the club’s involvement in next season’s Champions League is looking like a busted flush.
It will take two years and maybe another £500million to make United proper challengers for the Prem title again - a shocking indictment of how bad planning and mis-management have cost the club so much of its pride and standing as a force in football.
But it has to be done and so the powers that be have to give Rangnick’s successor a running start.
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That means getting off the fence, making a choice on who takes over then barging through the transfer window.
And that means now or the new manager will only be picking up from where Rangnick leaves off - and that is nowhere.
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