Man City might be showing Manchester United what to do with managerial change strategy

Last week threatened to be busy but turned out to be so quiet it was a struggle to come across any Manchester United coverage on some of the national newspaper websites over the weekend.

United’s refusal to clarify Erik ten Hag’s position was in itself so newsworthy the BBC even did a story on it. After four days of attempting to get concrete confirmation, this correspondent got a credible steer from a source on Friday. At nearly five o’clock.

You cotton on pretty quickly in this industry that Friday is the worst day for news. Readers have metaphorically or literally logged off and are already in weekend mode.

So the published time of ‘Erik ten Hag expecting to stay’ came at the absolute worst possible time in a barren week and with another eight days until United played again. By that time, the natural assumption was United would not sack Ten Hag even though they could not actually bring themselves to answer the question on millions of fans’ lips.

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It helped United that Lee Carsley presided over a tactical debacle in England’s first defeat to Greece at Wembley on Thursday night. That was compounded by Carsley’s mixed messages during his post-match media rounds as to whether he wanted the England coach's job on a full-time basis or would rather get back to coaching the Under 21s. And so the news cycle whirled again and United-related queries died down.

The England national team and United are the two sporting institutions that fascinate this country the most and it remains to be seen which one will appoint their next permanent manager first. England technically have a vacancy and United don’t, but the latter have started lining up potential replacements for Ten Hag.

There had been whispers that Pep Guardiola would relish coaching England for a while before yesterday;s stories. When it was brought up during his appearance on Italian TV show Che Tempo Che Fa, Guardiola was quoted as saying: “Leaving City? It’s not true, I haven’t decided yet.

"And it is not even true that I will be the next England coach. If I had decided I would say it… I don’t know either, anything can happen.”

Guardiola’s contract with City expires in the summer and their director of football, Txiki Begiristain, will leave after the Club World Cup. City swiftly confirmed Hugo Viana will be Begiristain’s replacement.

The inevitable suggestion is that City have lined up Sporting Lisbon coach Ruben Amorim to replace Guardiola. Sporting’s incumbent director of football is, of course, Viana.

Amorim and Viana are believed to be close personally and professionally. The pair were teammates at Braga and City could be looking to replicate the Begiristain-Guardiola dynamic that has yielded six Premier League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, the Champions League and the Club World Cup finishes in mid-July.

Begiristain and Guardiola have known each other since they were teammates at Barcelona in the early Nineties and the former paraded the latter as the club's new coach in June 2008.

On our cab ride back from the Dragao Stadium after United's last-gasp draw with Porto, we got talking to the driver, who was a Porto fan. He could not believe that Amorim, of interest to Liverpool and West Ham United earlier this year, was still coaching Sporting.

Sporting are the reigning champions of Portugal again, having ended a 19-year title drought under Amorim in 2021. Amorim is seventh on the list with bookmakers to become the next United manager.

Dan Ashworth will be the main point of contact when United eventually come to identifying a replacement for Ten Hag. Ashworth has made four managerial appointments at club level: Roberto di Matteo, Roy Hodgson and Steve Clarke at West Brom, and Graham Potter at Brighton. The latter three Brits.

Kieran McKenna of Ipswich has the shortest odds of a prospective British United manager and he was seriously considered to replace Ten Hag back in May.

Idealistic figures at United have favoured a British manager for years, influenced more by the dynasties of Sirs Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson than the David Moyes error. Ryan Giggs had Wayne Rooney's endorsement when Louis van Gaal entered the endgame.

It is also worth noting that Ashworth was in favour of hiring Ralf Rangnick as England coach when he was on the FA’s three-man panel in 2016. Ashworth was overruled by FA chief executive Martin Glenn and former United chief executive David Gill, who favoured Sam Allardyce.

Ten Hag, of course, had such little time for Rangnick that the German left United six days after Ten Hag took over, his consultancy contract shredded before it became active. Rangnick thought United’s regrettable interest in Marko Arnautovic was a media invention.

This week is bound to be busier for Ten Hag.