Arsenal legend Michael Thomas has spoken exclusively to CaughtOffside about possible candidates to be the next Manchester United manager.
The future of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer remains uncertain at the moment after some poor recent form, though he somewhat surprisingly managed to survive the recent 5-0 defeat at home to Liverpool.
One option for Man Utd has just gone, with Antonio Conte taking over at Tottenham yesterday, but Thomas believes there are other good candidates out there as well.
Among those is Leicester City boss Brendan Rodgers, who has been linked several times with big jobs in recent months, though Thomas doesn’t currently want him to replace Mikel Arteta at his old club Arsenal.
“Brendan is a really good manager and his philosophy and ideas of how he wants his teams to play are clear,” Thomas told CaughtOffside. “What he has done at Leicester is amazing to see, winning a trophy last season to cap it off.
“Given a bigger budget, I am in no doubt he would be able to do a good job at one of the so-called bigger teams.
“As for his link to Arsenal, I have said it before and I believe Arteta is the man for the job. His ideas are also clear and he is working with the youngest squad in the league. A few more experienced additions will help him further.”
On Rodgers, he added: “I do think he is a manager that could thrive at a bigger club, with all respect to Leicester. They have been just short of the top for the last couple of years and I think a little more quality investments may have been able to really tilt the table.
“Whether he would consider managing at Man Utd is to be seen but I definitely think he has all the capabilities to do so. Rodgers would be a good candidate but Conte surely would have been the preference.
“There is always Pochettino at PSG, and Zidane, who is currently on a break. One name I would also put strongly in the hat is Luis Enrique. He is a really top quality coach, and him going up against Pep and Klopp would be amazing to see.
“You never want to wish on a manager’s downfall, but United are not and haven’t been where they want to be for quite some time now. And that’s even with the massive investment they’ve been able to give to various managers since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
“Solskjaer hasn’t had an amazing start to the season, and I think if he fails to push the top three teams and win the FA Cup, you could see a lot of pressure building on him to be sacked.”