Pochettino’s arrival at Manchester United seen as another belated managerial appointment

Mauricio Pochettino has been appointed Manchester United’s new manager, an arrival Jonathan Wilson argues feels belated and might have been better made a few years ago.

Wilson opens by invoking a Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch—quoting the exchange, "And your time starts ... now! What is paleontology? Smithers: Yes, absolutely correct. Magnusson: What’s the name of the directory that lists members of the peerage? Smithers: A study of old fossils. Magnusson: Correct. Who are Len Murray and Sir Geoffrey Howe? Smithers: Burke’s. Magnusson: Correct. What is the difference between a donkey and an ass? Smithers: One’s a trade union leader, the other’s a member of the Cabinet …"—to illustrate Manchester United’s pattern of appointing managers based on past credentials rather than present suitability.

He argues that football changes continually and that recruitment must assess how much past success depended on a specific environment; Wilson notes that "only four managers have won the English league title with more than one club," using that scarcity to underline the difficulty of identifying candidates who can replicate success in new circumstances.

Wilson revisits the Jose Mourinho episode around Sir Alex Ferguson’s 2013 retirement, writing that "Mourinho has recently claimed he turned the job down; other versions of events have him raging in a Madrid hotel as he learned that David Moyes had been hired, seemingly because Sir Bobby Charlton, then a senior board member, was worried about his impact on the image of the club." He adds it is impossible to know if Mourinho would have succeeded then, while noting Mourinho later won a third league title at Chelsea.

On Mourinho’s eventual return in 2016, Wilson says events in his final months at Stamford Bridge had undermined him: "He seemed weary and fractious, the tactical doubts raised in his final year at Madrid had proliferated and there was a growing sense his methods did not quite work with elite modern players." He uses that episode to caution against appointing managers perceived as coming down from a peak.

Turning to David Moyes and Louis van Gaal, Wilson writes that "Given the immense power Ferguson had, it would have been hard not to appoint Moyes when he had backed him," while arguing Moyes might have been more suitable six or seven years earlier because "modern managers tend to peak in their mid-late 40s." He points out van Gaal "was 62 when he took the reins at United, enjoying a second coming after winning the Dutch title with AZ Alkmaar and an impressive 2014 World Cup campaign with the Netherlands," but says the timing and expectation of calm were misplaced because "Van Gaal is many things but he is not a calming presence."

Wilson assesses the club’s pursuit of so-called rising stars by examining Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim: "Ten Hag’s Ajax had played astonishing football, had beaten Juventus and Real Madrid thrillingly in the Champions League, had come within Lucas Moura’s implausible hat-trick of a Champions League final. Amorim had ended Sporting’s 19-year title drought." He argues both appointments failed to deliver as hoped, adding that "Ten Hag, skilfully as he managed Cristiano Ronaldo’s exit, seemed overawed by the job; Amorim’s insistence on playing 3-4-2-1 with a squad ill-equipped to play that way was one of the reasons Dan Ashworth expressed reservations, leading to his departure as sporting director."

Wilson concludes by weighing Pochettino’s credentials: "He has done remarkable things: he may not yet have won trophies in England but he effected such an extraordinary transformation at Tottenham that it seemed not unreasonable they should be part of the Super League project. He found things difficult at Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea, but most people do. A last-16 exit at a home World Cup with the USA was about par. The question, now he is 54, is whether the sense of drift about his career is an unfortunate and temporary state, or evidence that he is not quite what he was." He adds, "Perhaps the United job will revitalise him and he will revitalise them. But this feels like another appointment that would have been better made a few years ago; that United, once again, are answering the previous question."