Manchester United risk replacing Ten Hag with an even worse fit as rivals hold ‘discussions’

We like Thomas Frank. We think he is a good manager. But we see nothing to suggest it is an upgrade at Manchester United for Erik ten Hag or Mauricio Pochettino.

It says a lot about how this summer is unfolding in the managerial merry-go-round that this piece, conceived at 9 a.m. in response to Thomas Frank has been strongly backed for the Chelsea job it turned, in the time I spent writing it, into a Thomas Frank-Manchester United story.

Simply put, it’s currently impossible to keep up with the absurd pace of developments around the hiring and firing game of manager at the moment, and that’s especially true for Chelsea, a club that feels violent in a way that which I have never seen before. at the top end of English football.

While now they seem determined to appoint Enzo Maresca on this very night, itself a highly dubious upgrade for the departed Mauricio Pochettino, we have 800 words left to save. We could throw it away, but thankfully this is the great Managergeddon of 2024. The bad news is that everything you write will be out of date before you finish it; The good news is that there will always be a way to repurpose it for another batsh*ttery-like club.

We really like Frank, that’s the first thing to say here. He is a good manager doing a good job at a good club. He just seems like a decent guy, happy to quietly get on with his job. All this is also kind of a problem. We just don’t know what anyone sees to suggest he’s a good fit for Chelsea or now Manchester United.

He is just 18 months younger than Pochettino and four years younger than Erik ten Hag. He’s of the same generation, just without anything like the top-tier resume they enjoy. It’s fair to point out that it’s hard to use a lack of big club experience against a manager getting a big club job, because how else is he supposed to get that experience? But at the same time, there is such overwhelming evidence that making a leap of this magnitude rarely works.

There almost always needs to be a stepping stone between the small, well-run club and the gigantic superclub. Jumping straight from the small fry to the big fish almost never works.

We can’t be too effusive in our praise for Chelsea as we look past Frank given where they’ve landed. Maresca is at least a legitimately young coach at 44, but his entire managerial career in the first team consists of 67 matches with Parma (a reign that lasted only 14 matches) and Leicester, none of which were in the top flight . It’s an even bigger point, if anything.

Frank can at least point to a fairly solid Premier League record, even if he joins Roberto De Zerbi as a highly regarded Premier League manager who has timed a particularly poor disappointing season leading up to this summer of carnage.

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But can he show anything like the real challenge of your Manchester United or the Chelsea of ​​this world? Something that suggests it’s a legitimate upgrade to the awkward trophy-laden Ten Hag, rather than just a really good football manager quietly getting on with things at a lower level with far less attention and pressure?

We just don’t see it. If anything, the opposite is true. The only time Brentford faced significant outside attention involving a big name was Ivan Toney’s Great and Trumpeted Return. And that went pretty much completely to shit after about five games.

The unique awkwardness of that particular situation wasn’t Frank’s creation at all, but nothing about the way he handled it suggested a man about to step in and settle the egos of a group of players who wouldn’t take him on. seriously Ralf Rangnick.

Frank may well have the charisma and energy to manage a big club, but if he – or anyone, really – could make the jump straight from a ‘Hounslow bus stop’ to ‘This is Manchester United Football Club, we’re talking. about’ seems so completely doubtful. It’s certainly not clear to us why any group of big club fans should particularly want to provide the proving ground, in any case.

Chelsea decided to sack Pochettino, which is crazy. United will probably sack Ten Hag, who is less crazy. That both seem to be casting their nets around very untried managers is hugely puzzling.

United can at least claim to be looking for something that might work over something that turns out not to – despite those rogue cup wins along the way – but it still feels like a summer where more clubs have lost their senses.

READ THE FOLLOWING: Why Manchester United must sack Erik ten Hag despite ‘greatest performance of the post-Fergie era’