Manchester United are in a world of trouble as they prepare to face Arsenal in the Premier League.
The Red Devils are currently seventh in the Premier League. They’re 16 points behind leaders Manchester City and only 14 points ahead of Fulham at the bottom of the table. What’s worse is that they’re a full eight points behind the Gunners ahead of their clash on Wednesday.
The blame for this crisis (and yes, it is one) lies with a whole host of parties. There’s a hierarchy of blame, really, where the players need to be criticised. But not as much as José Mourinho, and even he should only be criticised within the context that he’s working under Ed Woodward. And Woodward’s place in the drama is wholly dependent on the Glazers as owners, who are the biggest culprits of all.
But the most pertinent and solvable problem of all of those is, of course, Mourinho’s position as manager.
It’s not as simple as just sacking Mourinho, though. The Portuguese has got such a hold over United that simply removing him would cause havoc at Old Trafford. And while a period of havoc followed by half a season not being managed by Mourinho is preferable to what the Red Devils currently have going on, there is a third way, as their next opponents have shown us.
1. Reassure the stars
Do you think Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was committing himself to Arsenal just to keep playing under lovable Grandfather Arsene Wenger and his non-training? Sure, Mesut Ozil would have signed on again, but how happy do you think Alexandre Lacazette was? And Petr Cech? When you read about what Arsenal’s old goalkeeping coach was getting up to, or rather not getting up to. My word!
But they would have surely been reassured things were being worked on to remove Wenger from his seat of absolute power and thus actually bring Arsenal into the new decade. That’s what United need to do. With all players, but crucially David De Gea, Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial.
The three most talented players in the United squad have all had run-ins with Mourinho, and they must be assured he’s on the way out. So they should probably stop dogging it and ruining their chances of picking up form once the new boss comes in (i.e. Eden Hazard in 2015/16). It’s also worth reassuring Juan Mata, because he’s really nice (and quite sad at the minute) and deserves to know he may soon have a manager that likes to play football.
2. Find a director of football
This was the key thing Arsenal did. They signed Sven Mislintat from Borussia Dortmund to be their sporting director/director of football. This immediately gave the footballing side of the club a clear leader. Someone who could focus on the big picture, the vision, without needing to concern himself with the day-to-day coaching of the side and, of course, scouting and transfers.
Mislintat had already worked wonders at Arsenal before the Gunners got rid of him. Since then he’s really taken control as Arsenal are rebuilding themselves back to rampaging relevance. United could use someone like that, and have been linked with Atlético Madrid’s Andrea Berta (the man who signed Antoine Griezmann, Jan Oblak and Thomas Lemar).
Having a sporting director/director of football in place is essential as they will allow United to have a coherent structure when pursuing players, meaning Shotgun Ed won’t be able to botch countless negotiations related to football as he has done for years. Moreover, the sporting director will actually be able to help identify and sign the new manager. A modern football set-up! Fancy that, eh?
3. Sack Mourinho
Here’s the big one: you’ve got to sack Mourinho. This is obviously a departure from Arsenal, because the Gunners could afford to wait until the end of the season and then allow for a more dignified uncoupling. They let Wenger walk out with his head held high, seemingly on his own terms; United cannot afford to do that. Mainly because Mourinho is an even bigger disaster than Wenger ever was and has United absurdly low in the table. He needs to go, now.
Don’t hang around either: once you have your sporting director in place, you make the move. Hell, make it public too, maybe even call a press conference to do it. Bonus points if you can make him sit there as the new director of football announces his departure. The man has brought so much sorrow and misery to clubs across western Europe over the years but has always managed to slink away into the shadows; even Eva Carneiro’s vengeance didn’t truly come until Mourinho was back in work.
4. Give it Nicky for a bit
One of the issues with a mid-season switch is that you get panicked after sacking your coach. If you can’t secure your first and best choice quickly, you go for someone who’s more easily available. But that’s a bad plan, and won’t work.
So United should give the job publicly to Nicky Butt while the club searches for a new coach. Now, ideally a coach will have been identified and negotiations will be ongoing, but publicly giving Butt the job for an interim period of time would bring a sense of stability as well as give Butt a taste of the big time, and should he prove capable of holding such a station then he becomes another option down the line.
5. Secure the new coach (Pablo Machin?)
The final step. And the one the club have to get right. After Sir Alex Ferguson hand-picked David Moyes as his successor (still having difficulty processing that one), Woodward and the gang made two strange managerial appointments. Louis van Gaal was a great idea, but the club never backed him with the technical players he needed and lumbered him with three ageing No.9s to cram into one team.
And while Mourinho made sense at the time, the idea that United were going to try and build with him rather than use him for a one-season confidence boost and return to the Champions League was laughable. United’s xG and xG Conceded have plummeted since the start of 2017/18 and that is precisely because Mourinho has lost his swagger, and without Zlatan Ibrahimovic around to transmit a sense of royalty and energy, the squad meekly fell under the grind of Mourinho’s heel.
But now, with a sporting director in place, a better decision will be made. But who? Who out there could get United, this United, playing good attacking football? Who could maximise the squad’s best players while disguising the weakest? Well, they could do worse than (once again) following Arsenal’s blueprint and looking to Spain to find Sevilla’s Pablo Machin.
Machin is a superb coach. At 43, he’s on the young side, and he doesn’t have that much experience, but he’s proven himself incredibly capable. Last season he guided Girona (who he got promoted a season before) to an incredible 10th-place finish. This got him the Sevilla job on a two-year contract, and he’s since transformed the Andalusians.
Sevilla are currently just one point off the top of La Liga. Moreover, they play sensational football in a vibrant 3-5-2; a formation which perfectly accentuates Manchester United’s strengths (ball playing midfielders, lots of strikers) while making light of their weaknesses (no wingers, terrible full-backs). Machin’s style is bold and proactive, just like Unai Emery’s was when he guided Sevilla to three consecutive Europa League wins.
Here, United don’t need a holding midfield bore like Nemanja Matic. They could deploy Fred and Paul Pogba as key playmakers and allow Jesse Lingard to resume his role as a dynamic off-the-ball genius (similar to the role he plays with England.
And the strikers? Incredible talents for sure, but none of them are a winger and yet so often Anthony Martial or Marcus Rashford must play in that role in order to get minutes. Making one of them partner Romelu Lukaku would give United serious threat in attack with two forwards with pace, skill and intelligence. Hell, this system would even get the best out of problem child Alexis Sánchez.
Machin’s commitment to attack has gotten so much success out of the lesser talents of Girona and Sevilla, so the poor state of United’s full-backs wouldn’t be a problem (especially given their decreased defensive responsibility). And if you gave him some of the wonders that United have in attack, he could do something special.
6. Profit???
The Glazers may be doing plenty of profiting already, but the club sure aren’t seeing the benefits. However with a director of football in place as well as a bright, ambitious coach (like Pablo Machin) at the helm, Manchester United would become a delightfully fun team again.
And delightful fun brings in the crowds and makes the people pay attention. Moreover, with the attacking talent at their disposal, it would likely lead to United rocketing up the league table and back into relevance as a top-four side. Or they could stick with Mourinho and continue to exist as a really, really expensive version of Alan Curbishley’s Charlton.
The post Man Utd must follow Arsenal’s blueprint to replace Jose Mourinho appeared first on Squawka News.
From Squawka NewsSquawka News https://ift.tt/2Ud9itU
No comments:
Post a Comment