Stop debating Pochettino versus Conte. That argument is a gift to Manchester United's hierarchy because it lets them off the hook for what they're actually guilty of: they can't make a decision, and haven't been able to for weeks.
As of Wednesday, November 11, Michael Carrick was still United's manager. He took training at Carrington with the players not away on international duty. Confirmation of his departure was expected within a day or two, with a coaching change due before the November 22 trip to Liverpool. So the club had already decided the man is finished, leaked it to half the football press, and sent him out to run a session anyway. That's cruel, and it's entirely the doing of the people above him.
Follow the paperwork, because it tells you how this club is run now. Carrick's future was set to be decided at a meeting at Sir Jim Ratcliffe's Monaco residence, attended by Ratcliffe, chief executive Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox, with the last two reportedly leaning toward dismissal. A director of football, a chief executive and the co-owner, holding a summit on the Riviera, all to sack a manager sitting in the relegation zone on the back of one win in ten league games, off the worst start to a United season since 1986. That call just needed spine.
They couldn't even manage the first call cleanly. After the 3-0 defeat at Bournemouth, United kept Carrick in the job because the people at the top couldn't agree on who should replace him. One camp wanted Eddie Howe, another backed Julian Nagelsmann, and in the absence of consensus a dead man was left walking. Carrick took the squad to Chelsea and lost 2-0, scraped a 3-2 Champions League win over Roma, and dragged a 4-4 out of Aston Villa with two stoppage-time goals, all of it played by a manager the building had already written off.
Consider who they were doing this to. Carrick had already proven himself in the job. He took over as interim after Ruben Amorim was sacked in January, beat City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham along the way, led United to third, and earned the permanent job in the close season on merit. The autumn collapse is real, and it's a sacking offence. But by the won-games column he did more with worse than the two men before him. The reward is being made to train a group that already knows he's done.
As for the appointment itself, Pochettino is a fine hire on football logic. He's long had admirers at Old Trafford, United reportedly have a verbal agreement in principle, and the compensation to US Soccer for his release clause is around $10 million. Conte wins quickly and leaves quickly everywhere he goes. If the choice is Pochettino, fine. The scandal lies elsewhere. People wanting an inspiring name are aiming their anger at the wrong target.
The target is the regime. Three managerial cycles in roughly a year, Amorim out, Carrick in, Carrick made permanent, Carrick now going, and after all of it the hierarchy still can't align on who does the job before firing the man currently doing it. It's dysfunction wearing a suit, and it belongs to Ratcliffe, Berrada and Wilcox.
If you're going to sack him, sack him. Everything else is just INEOS admiring the length of its own deliberation while the table hardens around 18th place.
