Inside Manchester United’s search for a new permanent manager

There may be a longer wait for the next Manchester United managerial appointment than in previous summers of change: the club will consider candidates who are in charge of teams at the World Cup finals, many of whom will be working into July.

That means the likes of Carlo Ancelotti, Julian Nagelsmann, Mauricio Pochettino and the England coach Thomas Tuchel cannot be discounted. With a World Cup final on July 19, that could be one more factor in a giant decision for a club that emerges from yet another intense period of upheaval and finger-pointing.

At United, the tumult of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era does not diminish the longer it goes on. The stakes just get higher as the wait continues for a return to the success of a bygone age.

The club are not looking for a saviour figure as they have in the past – when the idea was to find someone who, like Ferguson, could be all things to all men. The successor to Ruben Amorim will have to work within the structure that the young Portuguese head coach operated – and eventually rebelled against in spectacular style earlier this month.

At Old Trafford on Saturday, the home fans will watch their side take on Manchester City, the neighbours who emerged from their own modern history of self-sabotage to seize pre-eminence in the English game.

One sizeable legal case pending, City’s six Premier League titles in eight years – and eight since 2012 – have changed the Premier League. As for City’s manager: that has not been a problem since 2016. Unfortunately for United there is only one Pep Guardiola.

So much has changed that the two men who will help pick the next United manager are both formerly of City. The United chief executive Omar Berrada is a seasoned modern football executive, with 13 years at the City Football Group following his time at Barcelona. Multilingual, Paris-born, of Moroccan heritage with a US education, he is in charge.

His close colleague is director of football Jason Wilcox, formerly a City academy chief. Wilcox was a Bolton-born, heart-on-the-sleeve Premier League winger, and a successful one who carried that ethos into coaching, development and now this high-profile role. They are a pair that perhaps only football would throw together. Both were key players in Amorim’s arrival, his reign and then the conflagration that prefaced his dethroning. The fallout for all concerned has been brutal. But where now?

Ability to handle pressure key criterion

The new United manager, like all his predecessors, will be selected on his ability to deal with the pressure the club exerts on players and staff. Emotional intelligence is how that skill is described now. What Ferguson’s generation would probably call it is guile and resilience.

It became clear that Amorim, in the crucial moments, could not always cope with setbacks and then the scrutiny that would come his way. Up to that point in his career, Amorim, three times a league champion in Portugal with Sporting CP, had a 71 pet cent win rate. Losing games was a new experience. Appointed aged 39 in November 2024, in the midst of the first managerial crisis for the new Sir Jim Ratcliffe regime, United were betting on his potential rather than knowing him for sure. They did not have the time to do otherwise.

A decision had to be made as Erik ten Hag’s team tanked and Amorim emerged as one of a limited number of options. Soon after came the departure of Dan Ashworth, then sporting director, after just five months in the role. Wilcox moved up from technical director having won the confidence of the club in the eight months he spent there.

This time, the club’s leadership recognise that something – and someone – very different to Amorim is required. There is also a belief that there is much more time to make that decision, as well as a structure in place capable of informing the choice and then, after that, a club better placed to support the man who gets the job. Time will tell in that regard.

As well as those at the World Cup, there are many good Premier League options: Oliver Glasner, leaving Crystal Palace this summer; Marco Silva; Andoni Iraola and perhaps Roberto De Zerbi too. Informed conversations this week suggest that the key will be a manager who understands the unique pressure of United and can deal with it. Not to mention guide a group of players who must do the same.

As for Carrick, the club wanted an interim manager with a United pedigree who could stand in front of an embattled squad as one who has been in their shoes. They feel his coaching team, including Steve Holland and Jonathan Woodgate, is well-equipped for the challenge. A successful run to the end of the season will make him a candidate for the full-time job but it would have to be exceptional circumstances. There is unlikely to be a repeat of the 2019 promotion of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer from temporary to permanent.

New manager to have neither more nor less power than Amorim

The end of Amorim, and the apportioning of blame that followed, has been bruising for the club. The collapse of the relationship between Amorim and Wilcox was so swift, in the period after the draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers on December 30 and just before the Leeds United game five days later, that there are some at United who are still retracing events and wondering how it came to this.

Despite 13 months of results that were among the worst of any United manager in history, the club were shoulder to shoulder with Amorim throughout. Wilcox and Amorim were close, and often found in one another’s offices at the Carrington training ground. There were disagreements but Wilcox’s job was to make Amorim’s role as easy as possible. Which is not to say he could grant him every wish. Nevertheless, Wilcox, like Berrada, had a stake in what they hoped would be Amorim’s success.

Amorim was part of all decision-making processes. He did not wish to go ahead with an Amazon Prime offer to make an All Or Nothing documentary on United and that proposal was declined. It was Amorim whose input into pre-season tour destinations was considered above all, with Berrada making the final call. It was Amorim whose word on signings was weighed at every turn, even if at times the club felt it was not possible to accommodate every wish.

Mostly manager and club were aligned on signings this summer although Amorim did not win every battle. Wilcox and Berrada went for Benjamin Sesko over Amorim’s preference, Ollie Watkins, although both sides agreed a third attacking signing should be prioritised over a midfielder. The most keenly fought call was the club’s choice to go for Senne Lammens over Emi Martínez – Amorim’s pick.

Had Amorim earned the right to a veto over everything? It is not a privilege granted to many managers – even Ferguson did not get every player he wanted. When a previous United regime did briefly cede Ten Hag that power, the mistakes haunted the club long after his departure.

The conflict in Wilcox’s meeting with Amorim after the draw with Wolves came out of nowhere as far as the club were concerned. It began with questions over the team shape and why Amorim went back to 3-4-2-1 and then escalated wildly. Amorim’s press conferences before and after the following Leeds match made it clear he wanted out. When he comes to give his side of it – if he does – Amorim will have his own view, but United are not about to give his successor any more or less power.

They view it as a collaboration between key figures in a football department led by Wilcox. He reports to Berrada who makes his recommendations to the board. Atop it all sits Ratcliffe and Joel Glazer and his brother Avram who contribute to decision making. Everything runs towards supporting the coach and giving him the optimum chance to win.

In that sense it is no different to the club for the last 150 years. Albeit United are not looking for another manager to run the club as Ferguson did. They do not believe any one individual – even the 44-year-old Ferguson who arrived in 1986 – could run a club from top to bottom on the scale of United in 2026. That is not an uncommon position in elite football. Most clubs work the same – including City and Liverpool, the latter of which is run by the Fenway Sports Group executives from Mike Gordon and Michael Edwards downwards.

The problem for United is that they are yet to demonstrate a successful way of doing so. What might be different this time?

Amorim’s long-term successor joins better-functioning club than predecessors

The belief is that the new manager will walk into a better-functioning club than the one Amorim arrived at in November 2024. Berrada and Wilcox had barely been in post for six months. The first summer transfer window had to be planned as soon as they walked through the door. Wilcox, who came in April that year, and Ashworth, who arrived even later, were still assembling a clear sense of what Ten Hag needed – and of what the existing players were capable. Berrada was embarking on the first of two major redundancy programmes to stem a run of huge annual losses.

While supporters may tire of hearing of executive teams, there is now a new one at United. Chris Vivell, head of recruitment; Sam Erith, head of performance; Mike Sansoni, director of data; and new academy director Stephen Torpey. Berrada and Wilcox are relatively well-established and have the battle scars from two managerial sackings, starting with the new contract for Ten Hag then his subsequent dismissal. The price paid for that experience has been high.

Not many of the decisions Berrada has made have been popular – and to a great extent that has been the essence of his job. In short, reducing massive losses. The redundancy programmes and the raising of ticket prices, as well as reallocation of seats for some season-ticket holders, hurt fans and employees. United would argue there was no alternative for a club losing hundreds of millions of pounds. Yet all of it increases the pressure.

The financial results released in September for the year ending June 30, 2025 saw a huge fall in losses down to £33m from £113.2m. Once again, the club will have to swallow the cost for another managerial exit package which will prompt more recriminations next September. But inside the club’s new regime, there was considered to be no option but to stem the losses.

The debt, topping £750m, including the borrowings of the Glazer family, remains. This era of its ownership, a period of astonishing capital extraction by a Florida commercial real-estate family who seized control in 2005, is the shadow that endures. But this is United’s reality and will be for the foreseeable. They have to find a way to thrive in spite of it.

All these factors are related to the search for the new manager. The new man will inevitably have to answer, at some point, questions on club finances, its ownership, and two decades of enmity with the fanbase. This is not an easy entity to propel forwards, riven as it is with more than 20 years of recriminations. Yet United can often be a great mass of contradictions.

They have a fanbase that loathes the Glazers – although Old Trafford sells out every game. A club that, having failed to make the Champions League last season, posted their largest ever annual revenue, £666m. All that damage done to reputation and performance yet still a commercial giant. Even the five major trophies and a further three finals since 2013 mean that this universally acknowledged low point comes with caveats. Overall there is a level of scrutiny to which no other club is subjected.

Many of the indicators say that United are back in crisis – and yet when Wilcox told the players last week, after Amorim’s departure, that a top-four finish is within their grasp, he was not asking for the moon on a stick. If United beat City, they would go to 35 points – level with Liverpool in fourth. If United are beaten badly then the needle flicks back in the other direction. They are permanently on this knife-edge.

It is stability, and the chance to build upwards, that the club hope for with the next appointment. There is that belief, misguided or not, that United are in a much better position to support a new head coach. That a candidate willing to take his place within a team of executives all prepared to support his efforts – led by Berrada and Wilcox – will thrive. The experience with Amorim gave enough of a glimpse of that, they believe, that it could work.

There was appreciation for Amorim staying the course in moving on big characters in the squad, primarily Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho and Jadon Sancho. In all cases the club and Amorim decided an exit was best. That is not an easy route for any manager, especially with the high-profile moves Rashford and Garnacho went on to and the degree of success they have enjoyed. There would be no going back on any of those decisions if the club had its time again.

United will not always be able to pay the kind of fees that blow others out of contention in the market. There may have to be a few more like Ayden Heaven, signed aged 18 from Arsenal for around £1m a year ago, and now worth considerably more.

In the short term, all signs point to United playing at least one friendly in the months to come in order to bolster a match-day income severely reduced by failure to qualify for Europe and exits from both domestic cups. That could be at Old Trafford, in Europe, or the Middle East. The Glazer brothers Joel and Avram, as well as Ratcliffe, are in Manchester this week for the regular monthly executive committee meeting. There is much to discuss.

There is another element to this latest managerial appointment – that City may themselves be in the market for Guardiola’s successor at the same time. The two clubs could even be in competition for the same man, although one suspects that the legacy of Guardiola leaves a very specific list of likely successors.

As ever with United, the next manager could be anyone from a long list. The club wants to play the attacking football that it was known for, but it does not want to go back to that past of a saviour figure – one man who rescues the whole operation. If it works, then it will be according to the newly-established system.

United hope that by doing it that way, replacing the next successful manager will not be as difficult as replacing the last has been.

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