Michael Carrick is out and Mauricio Pochettino is next in line, which makes him Manchester United’s eighth permanent manager since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. Sky Sports reported on Thursday that United have reached a verbal agreement in principle with the 54-year-old, who will most likely stay with the USA for their two games against Haiti before taking over.

United’s own statement said the club had reached “the extremely difficult conclusion that a change is necessary in order to achieve our ambitions”. The league table backs it up: one win in 10 Premier League games and a place in the relegation zone, with that 4-4 draw against Aston Villa the last straw after United were 2-0 down inside four minutes.

The win rates behind the churn

Ferguson won 59.7% of his games across roughly 1,500 matches. Nobody since has come near that over a long stretch. Jose Mourinho is the closest, at 58.3% (84 wins in 144), and he was still gone before the end of his third season.

Carrick’s 15 wins in 32 permanent games look respectable until you split them. He won 12 of his first 17 and finished third last season, then took three wins from 15 this time. Amorim won 24 of 63 before he was sacked on 5 January after 14 months. Pochettino isn’t walking into a job that needs a rebuild of one idea. He’s walking into one that has been rebuilt seven times.

The £100m habit

Sky Sports put the cost of hiring and firing managers since Ferguson at more than £100m, and said most people in football would see the treatment of Carrick as “a pretty shameful way” to handle a man who was backed after the 3-0 home defeat by Bournemouth last month and then removed anyway. United have also been here with Pochettino before. They held talks about him on three occasions and hired Erik ten Hag in 2022 instead. The release clause in his USA contract is £7m, Sky reports, and United still have to agree that and the terms for his backroom staff.

Gary Neville said: “You can keep changing the manager and thinking that’s going to be the answer.” He’s right about the pattern. It’s also true that Pochettino is a different type of appointment from Carrick, a coach with a full career behind him, and not a club figure asked to hold the fort.

Our view

Pochettino is the best available choice on the table, and he’s also the safest. Spurs went five seasons without a trophy under him and PSG sacked him and he lasted one season at Chelsea, so nobody should expect an immediate title challenge. What he can give a team in the bottom three is structure: a clear pressing plan and a coach who has been through bad starts before. Whether Ratcliffe’s group and the Glazers, who still sign off the big decisions, give him the time that seven predecessors didn’t get is the bigger question.

The first test could come at Anfield on Sunday 22 November, 4:30pm UK time, though most players only return from international duty by the Thursday before and nobody has said who will be on the touchline.