Manchester United are hapless and hopeless.
They have a bloated squad and a diva in Cristiano Ronaldo who has become a weekly circus act rather than match winner. I said at the weekend that Mauricio Pochettino would be a better bet for United this summer than Erik Ten Hag but, honestly, if I were either of those two I’d be turning the Red Devils down.
The club has made a litany of poor decisions in recent seasons and their administration has been so rank bad that they have put themselves so far behind Manchester City and Liverpool that, arguably, only Pep Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp could turn them around. There is one other man I’d fancy to be capable of doing and to want to do it, though, and that’s Antonio Conte.
So if there was even a hint he’d be gettable from Tottenham then, before Ten Hag puts pen to paper, I’d make one last-ditch attempt to get him. Because one thing is for sure, if he was given the tools and kept on a shortish leash, the Italian would quickly change the culture at United — something Jose Mourinho was never interested in doing.
Let’s be honest, with Ten Hag or Poch, there’d be an element of United taking a punt. But Conte knows well how to win titles and, while Spurs fans won’t like this, a man with his kind of CV has joined them to tick along until a properly big job comes up because they aren’t going to be challenging to be champions anytime soon.
Conte will have taken that job knowing that, if he got them into the top four, which he looks like doing, he’d have to be in the frame for the next big job in Europe. I know there’s a perception at United that he’d be a mardy bum, another Mourinho, and I know that apparently put them off in the summer, but I don’t think he would be.
He’d be a club builder, a manager much more in tune with what United need across the board than Mourinho ever was, and I reckon he’d walk to Old Trafford if they offered him the job. Conte demands a lot from his players, and he will push and pull and bully and badger until they do what he wants them to do.
But he’d find it incredibly flattering to manage a club like United and be charged with getting them to compete with Guardiola and Klopp. In fact, I’d be astounded if he wasn’t thinking, ‘If I do a good job at Spurs I will be in line for one of the really big jobs and be able to have a go at Klopp and Pep’, and there’s only one job that really sticks out.
Okay, so I suppose if Chelsea’s new owners wanted to change Thomas Tuchel in the next year or so, he could go back there but, Stamford Bridge aside, if he wants to be in the Premier League and challenging then there’s only one place he could be and that he’d want to be.
