Man Utd: Klopp among five managers who could actually turn club around with Arteta trust

Manchester United need a manager with expertise in fixing broken football institutions and resetting the culture. It’s Gareth Southgate time.

What they basically need is a Mikel Arteta: someone with ample self-belief, a cogent plan and the backing of a despondent club to carry it out.

Here are the precious few candidates.

Mikel Arteta Might as well shoot for the moon in the hope of landing among the lightbulbs.

Would Arteta still “100 per cent” leave Arsenal for Manchester United, as Rio Ferdinand once confidently stated? Perhaps not; the former are Premier League champions now, and his attempts to use maverick motivational methods with the latter would be hampered by Big Sir Jim’s job cuts or interference from Jason Wilcox.

But in terms of culture-resetting, standard-raising figureheads willing to rip up entire establishments before starting again, there is no greater architect than the man who rebuilt Arsenal in his own image.

The Gunners were not nearly as broken as this iteration of Manchester United. Arsenal were 10th when they made the panicked call to Arteta, with the off-pitch structure, while far from perfect, equally nowhere near as calamitous and actively damaging.

Freddie Ljungberg’s interim reign lasted six games before Arsenal deemed his DNA and knowledge of the club insufficient to overcome debilitating flaws in his coaching and management.

Manchester United are on their second KTC, nostalgia, still-in-touch-with-Ferguson interim appointment made permanent in well under a decade.

Arteta’s transformation of Arsenal from a lost, identity-less mid-table team into Premier League champions and European juggernauts within five phases and six years is often overlooked and unappreciated. If he turned this Manchester United mess around, the Spaniard would probably be knighted.

Unai Emery The arguably necessary buffer between dynastic Arsenal managers, hindsight has turned Emery into the perfect post-Wenger and pre-Arteta palate cleanser: an 18-month stopgap who inadvertently helped the club realise precisely what it needed.

Manchester United’s problem isn’t that they never had their Emery; it’s that every manager since Ferguson has been their Emery. They are yet to find the generational unifying force who can break the cycle of constant churn.

Emery’s Premier League legacy has been defined not at the Emirates, but Villa Park. The club he inherited in 17th was a rabble but after first being given the keys, then the spares, the deeds and the blueprint, the Spaniard has turned them into a trophy-winning Champions League outfit.

That has established Emery as the preferred candidate of many, despite those sub-optimal elite club experiences at Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal, who could not afford to grant Emery as much power, authority and control as Villa. United’s situation might be desperate enough whereby they sign themselves over not to a coach, but a manager who runs the ship from top to bottom like Ferguson.

Diego Simeone An Antonio Conte who sticks around, basically. An explosive, irascible figure who plants the bomb and blows the club to smithereens, but has the courtesy, wherewithal, patience and knowledge to stay for the restoration and pick up the few pieces he wants to keep.

Atletico Madrid were in crisis when Simeone was appointed in late 2011. They were 10th, had not won La Liga in a decade and a half, and had burned through 16 different permanent managers since, some of whom took the reins more than once.

“The team,” said Simeone at his unveiling, “is more important than any individual.”

As Sid Lowe wrote at the time: ‘Atletico is in crisis and in debt… He might resolve some of the team’s problems. But he cannot resolve them all: it wasn’t down in the dugout that Atletico most needed a change but up in the directors’ box. Coaches have been culpable too but when it comes to blame they have not been alone.’

It is remarkably Manchester-United-in-2026-coded. Simeone would clean house at executive level like no-one else.

Jurgen Klopp It won’t happen; that much is clear. Klopp vowed to “never, ever manage a different club in England than Liverpool” and “couldn’t for a second think about” betraying his “family”.

But he is one of the few who actually feasibly could fix Manchester United – in the right circumstances.

There is an alternate timeline on which Ed Woodward doesn’t horribly misjudge Klopp by trying to pitch Manchester United as “like an adult version of Disneyland” when they met in 2014.

The German waited another year before coming to the Premier League, and Liverpool did always feel like a significantly more natural fit.

There are probably too many doubters to convert into believers at Old Trafford now – and an entire ocean under the bridge for Klopp in any case. But he is modern proof that no matter how aimless a club can seem, it is possible for one appointment to trigger a revival.

Gareth Southgate INEOS, first and foremost, just need to get it out of their system. Southgate has basically confirmed his retirement from coaching, and his only post at club level ended with him being sacked in the Championship not far off two decades ago.

But the best in class, ten out of ten suits won’t stop considering his candidacy until it is removed from the equation.

It isn’t difficult to see why. Southgate revolutionised a shattered footballing institution, stepping up as its leader when all others deemed it untouchable, and meticulously mending the culture brick by brick.

He has sipped from a supposed poisoned chalice before and not only survived but thrived, dragging a sleeping, disgraced giant back to relevance.