OPINION: It's blindingly obvious Man Utd need to sign Pochettino

The appointment felt from the beginning like an act of blind optimism from a club seeking the elixir of their glorious past after the preening self-absorption of Jose Mourinho.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer actually collected his clothes from an Altrincham dry cleaners. He actually liked his players. But a fundamental niceness can no more sustain a football team than ghosts of ages past. The images of Manchester United’s players arriving for their spa day in the aftermath of humiliation at Burnley’s hands tells us how utterly lost this great institution has become.

The prime obstacle to the change of manager so urgently needed is the individual conspicuous by his absence from Old Trafford on Wednesday night.

Ed Woodward has worked his way through four managers in six years and burnt his way through the thick end of £750million in the process. His personal reputation is invested in Solskjaer more than any of the other hires.

The necessary action is so blindingly obvious that you wish, for United’s sake, that the club had owners who were remotely connected. Mauricio Pochettino is not only available but he fits the great club’s philosophy like a glove.

Sir Alex Ferguson always knew this. There was a reason why he, Pochettino and the then Tottenham manager’s assistant Jesus Perez sat down together at Scott’s in Mayfair in 2016 to enjoy a £114 bottle of Brunello di Montalcino 2011. (‘Myself and Sir Alex spoke, and Jesus drank,’ Pochettino later related with a smile.)

It was around the same time that Ferguson described Pochettino as ‘the best manager in the Premier League’. He is the one who fits more essentially than any other into Ferguson’s notion of what successful football management is all about, not least developing a youthful, homegrown core.

Woodward is the safest man in Old Trafford, secure enough to maintain the course he has set, with a share price which has soared from $15.33 in October to around $20 now. These are the numbers that matter in the space United now occupy.

But the mood in Old Trafford on Wednesday was desultory, deathly; about as bad as any night in what they laughably still call the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ across the seven years since Ferguson walked away. Every day of this self-imposed purgatory puts off the moment when United must set about tackling the yawning gulf between them and Liverpool. Every day without change is a wasted one.