Manchester United Discuss Pochettino as Carrick Faces Decision
Manchester United have begun formal talks with USA head coach Mauricio Pochettino as Michael Carrick stands on the brink of losing his job in one of the most significant weeks of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s new regime.
Carrick’s fate is set to be decided at a high‑level meeting in Monaco on Wednesday, attended by chief executive Omar Berrada, director of football Jason Wilcox and co-owner Ratcliffe. The summit is part of a scheduled strategy session, but this time the agenda is brutally clear: what happens next in the dugout.
The expectation inside the club is that Berrada and Wilcox will recommend that Carrick is removed. United’s season has already lurched into crisis; the numbers are as stark as the mood.
One win from their first 10 Premier League games. No victory since August. Eighteenth in the table, sitting in the relegation zone. Not since 1986-87, when they were 20th at this stage, have United looked so lost so early.
Carrick, photographed arriving at the Carrington training base on Wednesday, continues to work as normal in public view. Behind the scenes, the club are moving with a very different energy.
Pochettino back in the frame
United have again turned to a familiar name. Talks are under way with Pochettino, the former Southampton, Tottenham, Paris St‑Germain and Chelsea manager, about a return to the Premier League and a first spell at Old Trafford.
This is not a new courtship. United have sounded out the Argentine on three previous occasions: after Jose Mourinho’s dismissal in 2018, during the process that ended with Erik ten Hag’s appointment in 2022, and once more when Ten Hag himself was sacked in 2024. Each time, the timing, politics or competing options pushed the club in a different direction.
Now, with the team drifting and the Ratcliffe era demanding a clear football identity, the conversation has restarted in earnest.
Pochettino, 54, is currently under contract with the USA national team, a deal he renewed in August. He has a $10m (£7.5m) release clause, a figure United would have to trigger to free him from international duty. The USA face a two-legged Concacaf Nations League quarter-final against Haiti over the next week, a reminder that any move would require not just money, but delicate handling of timing and logistics.
United’s worst start in a generation
The urgency is driven by the table as much as by long-term vision. United’s slide to 18th has exposed a side short on structure, confidence and results. For a club that still sells itself on history, the parallels with the mid‑1980s are deeply uncomfortable.
Back then, United eventually found stability and success by sticking with a manager and a plan. This time, the leadership appear ready to reset again, but under a far more corporate, data‑driven framework led by Berrada and Wilcox.
Their trip to Monaco is officially one of their regular strategic gatherings. Yet no one inside or outside the club is in any doubt: Carrick’s future is the headline item. The sense is that United want clarity quickly, both for the players and for any incoming coach.
Pochettino’s profile and pull
Pochettino’s résumé remains one of the most compelling in the modern game for a club in United’s position.
He first arrived in the Premier League with Southampton in January 2013, transforming them into one of the division’s most progressive, aggressive pressing sides. His work on the south coast paved the way for a five-year spell at Tottenham from 2014, where he turned Spurs into serial top‑four finishers and took them to a Champions League final in 2019.
That Tottenham team, built around youth, intensity and clear tactical identity, has long appealed to decision-makers at Old Trafford. It is the kind of structure United have chased but never quite nailed in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.
Pochettino then stepped into the high-pressure, star-studded environment of Paris St‑Germain in January 2021, remaining there until July 2022, before returning to England to manage Chelsea in the 2023-24 season. His Chelsea tenure was turbulent but ended with signs of cohesion in a young, reshaped squad.
In September 2024 he moved into international football with the USA, leading the co-hosts to the last 16 of the 2026 World Cup. That run strengthened his reputation as a coach capable of imposing a recognisable style quickly, even in the fragmented world of international management.
A defining call for the Ratcliffe era
The decision now confronting Ratcliffe, Berrada and Wilcox is not simply about swapping one coach for another. It is about declaring, in concrete terms, what they want Manchester United to be.
Do they pay the release clause, prise Pochettino from a national job and hand him the keys to a squad in need of both pruning and rebuilding? Or do they hold their nerve with Carrick, hoping results turn before the table tightens further around them?
By the time the Monaco meeting breaks up, United’s hierarchy are expected to have chosen their direction. The club that once defined dominance now finds itself staring at the wrong end of the league, weighing up a manager who has so often been the one that got away.
If they move this time, there will be no hiding from the scale of the gamble – or from the demand that Pochettino finally delivers the identity Old Trafford has been waiting for.
