Pochettino to Man Utd looks close to settled, and the record he’d bring with him is better than the mood at Old Trafford suggests. BBC Sport’s Sami Mokbel reports that the USA coach is ready to accept an offer to replace Michael Carrick, who is expected to be relieved of his duties within 48 hours. Nothing is official.

Terms, timing and the USA problem

Mokbel says Pochettino wants to stay respectful to the US Soccer Federation and will wait for United to make an official approach. The release fee is $10m (£7.5m), and he only signed his USA contract in August. His BBC colleague Simon Stone goes further, writing that one source has told him the terms are “more or less agreed”. That’s one source, and Stone says there are still gaps to fill, starting with whether Carrick goes at all.

The awkward bit is the calendar. The USA play Haiti over two legs in the Concacaf Nations League quarter-final. Stone says United could decide whether Pochettino stays with the USA for those games, but if he did, he’d be turning round from a Tuesday night match that finishes in the early hours of Wednesday straight to Carrington to prepare for Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday 22 November (4.30pm UK time).

It’s a lot to ask for a first week. United are 18th, with one win in ten league games and none since August, their lowest position at this stage of a top-flight season since they were 20th in 1986-87, according to Mokbel.

What his record actually says

Chief football writer Phil McNulty has set out the career in his BBC column on Pochettino, and it reads as consistent rather than glamorous.

The gap is obvious: no trophy in England, and PSG’s hierarchy treated their two as the minimum. That’s the doubt McNulty himself raises. Against it, he points to what Pochettino does with individual players. He worked with Harry Kane at Spurs, signed Son Heung-Min for £22m from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015, and Cole Palmer scored 25 goals in 45 appearances under him at Chelsea.

Why it suits this squad

That last point matters most at United. A team that has won once in ten doesn’t need a grand system; it needs two or three attackers playing well above their recent level. Simon Stone wrote that Bruno Fernandes and Matheus Cunha carried United in the 4-4 draw with Aston Villa, and a coach with Pochettino’s habit of building around his forwards has an obvious start. Our reading is that he gets a response in the first month, and the real test is whether the defence holds up once the energy wears off.

There’s also a cultural fit that has nothing to do with shape. Guillem Balague, who worked with Pochettino on his book, told the BBC that Sir Alex Ferguson is mentioned 28 times in it, more than any other name, and that Omar Berrada is a fan. Asked about United during the World Cup, Pochettino turned to his assistant Jesus Perez and said: “One day, your dream comes true.” The line about the club is plain enough.

The ruthless side matters too. Pochettino shrugged off criticism for not phoning the players he left out of the USA squad, which tells you the dressing room won’t get much sympathy if it drifts. Carrick’s meeting in Monaco with Berrada, Jason Wilcox and Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the next step, and Liverpool away on 22 November is the first date a new head coach would be in the dugout.