Why Man Utd ditched Pochettino to sign Ten Hag

FT Desk

• 12 Apr 2022 13:47 CDT
• 7 min read

It now seems certain that Manchester United will appoint Erik Ten Hag as their next permanent manager in the coming months.

According to the Athletic, the Ajax manager has finally agreed terms with the Old Trafford side and will likely make the move to England at the end of the season.

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However, the only thing more sudden and surprising than Ten Hag’s decision to join Man Utd is the manner in which the club seemingly dropped his main contender for the job: Mauricio Pochettino.

The former Tottenham Hotspur manager was one of the firm favourites for the job until he suddenly was not. And there may be some clear reasons why Man Utd dropped the Argentine like stone.

He has failed the PSG test

While it may seem odd to suggest that Pochettino has “failed” at Paris Saint-Germain, as he’s on his way to winning the Ligue 1 title without too much bother, there’s no doubt that the former Spurs boss has struggled to live up to expectations.

Not only did the club crash out of the Champions League in dramatic fashion to Real Madrid, when the club’s star-studded side all but froze on the night, but the constant back and forth over Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and even Neymar’s future at the club paint a more troubled picture in the French capital.

Man Utd, like PSG, are a team full of overpowered star players and if his stint in France was a test run to see how Pochettino could handle the big personalities in his changing room then the manager has emphatically failed.

Man Utd need a good news story

Away from the nuts and bolts of the actual football, Pochettino’s time at PSG has also been rather publicly perceived as a step backwards for the manager.

And, when we consider that most Man Utd fans would have been ambivalent over his success at Spurs, it just goes to show that appointing the Argentine this summer would have been an entirely underwhelming move from the club.

Although things like public perception and media metrics shouldn’t matter in modern football, they absolutely do. And unlike Pochettino, Ten Hag is certainly flavour of the month.