'It doesn't take a psychologist to tell Man United they need their own Klopp'

Manchester United held a lead for the first time in four games this week, so maybe Sascha Lense did his job. Or maybe Ralf Rangnick did his. Teams can be coached on how to defend, too, coached on how to score goals. Not all of football is in the mind.

It seems strange that Manchester United employed an interim manager renowned as the guru of modern German coaching, yet when the players messed up three leads against Middlesbrough, Burnley and Southampton, it was treated as a job for the club psychologist.

Lense has a role to play, no doubt. Felipe Scolari made exceptional use of Regina Brandao during his time with Portugal. He felt some of his Brazilian-born players, like Deco, did not feel enough connection and investment in their adopted country.

The players were shown film of fans in Brazil celebrating Portuguese victories and Portuguese players as if they were their own. It still didn't win Portugal a European Championship against Greece, at home, mind.

Later, Brandao was again on the staff when an emotionally overwrought Brazilian team lost 7-1 to Germany in a World Cup semi-final.

Sometimes, it's about whether you can defend, too. Are Manchester United's problems really psychological or does Harry Maguire need to pull his socks up?

Answers on a postcard to the next Manchester United manager, please. It cannot be Rangnick, even if he gets them into the Champions League. Too much inconsistency remains.

Rangnick is on a run of six wins in 13. Points have been dropped against Newcastle, Wolves, Aston Villa, Burnley and Southampton.

Manchester City have been on a favourable run of games to cement their place at the top of the table, but United's isn't far behind. They haven't played a big-six club since meeting Arsenal on December 2, yet could be demoted to sixth if Arsenal and Tottenham win games in hand.

Manchester United travel to Leeds on Sunday, where they last lost in 2002. Leeds have been in poor form, yet would anyone risk a sizeable bet on the visitors?

That's not psychology - that's football. United still aren't showing enough aptitude for it under Rangnick.

The club will have a managerial vacancy this summer, coinciding with what many believe will be Mauricio Pochettino's break from Paris Saint-Germain. It shouldn't require a psychologist to solve that one, either. As Jurgen Klopp demonstrated in Milan, coaches win matches. That's what United need - their Klopp.

POGBA IS FOOTBALL'S WINDSOR CASTLE

You can tell Paul Pogba is fit again because there is now daily speculation about where he will be going this summer. When he was injured, it was all about staying at Manchester United because he needed them. Now, he's heading to PSG, maybe Manchester City.

He's the Windsor Castle of football. For a thousand years it was owned by the ruling monarch and then visitors got to tour if they paid, up until it was on fire, at which point it turned out we owned it all along and were in the chair for the rebuild.

As for Pogba's next club, PSG makes sense. They're French, he's French, they've seen him play in tournaments and internationals where he's made the difference.

Yet for City, or another Premier League rival, what about his performances for United across six seasons makes him worth the coin? Nobody who has closely followed Pogba's impact in the Premier League, his effect on matches versus the constant maintenance required, would entertain him. City's midfield are a different class, for a start.

A SIMPLE TRUTH FOR DJOKOVIC

PJ O'Rourke, the brilliant political satirist and commentator, died this week. Novak Djokovic gave his first major interview since the Australian Open debacle.

How are these events related? Well, O'Rourke once wrote something about personal freedom that should resonate with Djokovic, his sport and the nations in which it is played.

'There is only one basic human right,' stated O'Rourke in his 1993 book The Liberty Manifesto, 'the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.'

Djokovic does not have to receive the Covid vaccine and tournament organisers and the countries he plans to visit do not have to let him play, or even let him in. It really is as simple as that.

HUDSON-ODOI COURTED BY GHANA? LET HIM GO...

Gareth Southgate was right about Ademola Lookman. He wasn't quite good enough for England and all the pressure to prematurely elevate him to the national team, to ward off a claim from Nigeria, was little more than a ploy.

International football should never be an auction. Now Lookman will play for Nigeria, having failed to step up from England's Under 21 team. Good luck to him.

The same may happen with Callum Hudson-Odoi, who is being courted by Ghana. If so, let him go.

Hudson-Odoi has made three appearances for England, all in competitive internationals, but is not good enough yet to claim a regular place in the team. He is 21, so there is time, but if he isn't patient enough to justify a place on hard work and merit, Ghana it is. Southgate's instincts are not often wrong.

FA SUITS NO WORSE THAN WHITEHALL

The FA are advancing their candidacy to be the newly appointed regulator for football.

No doubt there will be a critical reaction. Football will be accused of wishing to mark its own homework, of preserving the status quo. These seem weaker arguments than simply asking why, if the FA sought this regulatory role, they so lazily gave it up over the decades.

The FA's problem is they are compromised by the desire to be a commercial entity. They need the clubs to provide the players, and the players to satisfy their sponsors and partners. They need the very groups they would be regulating.

Yet would they be worse than the much-heralded independent government regulator? Not really.

Earlier this month, DCMS head Nadine Dorries flew to Riyadh to sign a 'memorandum of understanding' to 'strengthen ties' between Britain and Saudi Arabia in sports, tourism and the arts. So let's park the idea that an independent regulator would have been more robust in their treatment of the Saudi takeover at Newcastle.

The Premier League resisted for more than a year and won several concessions. Any governing body steered by Whitehall would have caved instantly.

What is a 'memorandum of understanding' if not a clear indication that this Government is desperate for Saudi investment and will let the many moral issues slide? The Government believes it needs the wealth of the House of Saud as much as the FA need their household name footballers. They're both as compromised as each other.

VALIEVA DEFENCE IS THE GRANDADDY OF ALL EXCUSES

Not since Dennis Mitchell claimed that increased testosterone levels in his body were caused by having sex with his wife four times in one day has there been a doping excuse as medically flawed as that concocted on behalf of poor Kamila Valieva.

Mitchell's case fell apart, much like Valieva's free programme on Thursday, because while sex can raise testosterone levels, it cannot by the degree found in his body in 1998.

It is being claimed Valieva may have tested positive for trimetazidine by drinking from the same glass of water as her grandfather, who takes the medication, occasionally, for his heart. Nice try. The Court of Arbitration for Sport even entertained a video call in which grandad's medication was held up, to support the theory.

Unfortunately, as trimetazidine comes in film-coated pills or capsules, they would only dissolve in the stomach. There could, therefore, be no traces in saliva. Valieva's grandfather would have had to vomit on the unfortunate girl to pass on traces of his heart medication.

Equally, CAS heard that trimetazidine was one of three heart treatments found in Valieva's system. The other two are legal and were declared, and all have the happy effect of increasing oxygen supply to the heart which aids endurance for training purposes.

But CAS were not informed that Valieva has a heart defect and it seems a mighty coincidence that she should be showered in ingested illegal heart medicine in the family home, and that no one should remember such a spectacular event, least of all grandpa.

Yet what has unfolded is tragedy, not comedy. Valieva was a pitiful sight on Thursday as she tried and failed to execute a previously flawless routine. She fell, she cried, she finished fourth, conveniently allowing Russian team-mates gold and silver, and a medal ceremony. Such is the degree of suspicion around Russia, one could almost imagine the 15-year-old being told to take a fall or two for the cause, to clear the way.

The Valieva affair is as sad as it is debasing for sport and has utterly undermined the integrity of this Games. She should never have been allowed to compete. The Russian state system can handle this pressure, a 15-year-old cannot.

What did CAS claim they were avoiding? Irreparable harm? Russia's facilitator, IOC president Thomas Bach, must be so proud.

CHEER ON TEAM GB'S CURLERS... THEY'RE BRITS!

Here's what is great about British curling at the Olympics. It's British. It's a winter sport we can do. No Dutch ringers, no French converts, no Americans. We're not gaming the system to become competitive.

The British men's team who topped the round robin table and will go for gold tomorrow is led by Bruce Mouat of Edinburgh, with two lads from Stranraer and another from Dumfries.

The women's team, who also made the final four, are from Perth, Dumfries and Edinburgh. The fourth member, Hailey Duff, was born in New Zealand, but her family came to Britain while she was a little girl. Duff was introduced to the sport at Forfar Young Curlers, aged eight. She wasn't poached expediently from a more successful curling nation, fully formed. This isn't the skiing team.

So, yes, curlers tend to be from a specific corner of the country. There are 22 curling rinks in Scotland, compared to three in England, one in Wales and none in Northern Ireland. Even so, that's still a British sport.

This country produces curlers in a way it does not lugers or long-form speed skaters, which is why we collect athletes who could not make their own national teams, claiming them as ours. And curling is easy to grasp. Watch it for more than five minutes and you know the rules.

You may never distinguish your cab 540s from your Lando rolls over at the snowboarding but in curling there's a big target and you need to get nearest to the middle of it. And you are pretty much done.

Also, little need for performance-enhancing drugs. Whatever you are watching, you can pretty much guarantee it's straight. Apart from Russia at the last Games. Somehow, they managed to spoil it.

STAVELEY'S £10M ASHLEY LOAN RIDDLE

A legal tort between Mike Ashley and Amanda Staveley isn't greatly significant. It was always a marriage of convenience, those two.

What intrigues is if it is proven Staveley could not have made her investment in Newcastle without his £10million loan.

At the time of the takeover, much was made of Staveley's holding being funded by her family's money coming in part from the sale of a hotel. Maybe telling Newcastle supporters that she actually needed to involve the hated Ashley would have soured all that positive PR.

Yet court documents claim Staveley borrowed £30.5m from fellow consortium members the Reuben brothers, with £10m from Ashley to meet other costs. If this is true, it means not only were Staveley's public pronouncements misleading but she is lucky to have 10 per cent of a football club now in the ascendancy. Usually, one needs money to do that.

IGNORE SAUDI CASH, BRYSON

Bryson DeChambeau would be a big loss to the PGA Tour, if he deserts for the lure of Saudi money - but it would be his loss.

Imagine having the game, the power and the intelligence, to change golf and choosing to play instead with old men.

The best, the golfers against whom DeChambeau should be judged, are all staying with PGA events. The ones that matter, the majors, the Masters. They will play at Augusta, at St Andrews, they will contest the Ryder Cup.

Increasingly it is being suggested that DeChambeau, who has a fractious relationship with the PGA, will be the new tour's big draw and, plainly, there is huge money to be made if so. Yet why allow petty squabbles to harm a career? Where is the spectacle, the challenge in powering the ball past 50-year-old men interested only in their last, big pay cheque, while the real players compete elsewhere?

Winning on the Saudi tour against the previous generation would be no achievement. The 'not-so-Super League' Rory McIlroy called it this week.

'For the younger guys, it just seems a massive risk,' he added. 'You look at the people who have already said no: Jon Rahm, the No 1 in the world, Collin Morikawa, myself. That has to tell you something.'

DeChambeau was initially dubbed the golf scientist because of his approach to the game.

His physics degree allowed him to see the sport in a different way, it was said. For a clever man, then, he risks making a very dumb move.