Eddie Howe has already made it clear what he is looking for in a club amid potential interest from Manchester United.

The Red Devils are up the creek without a paddle, now eight games without a win and having won only one of their first eight Premier League fixtures. There was real excitement around Michael Carrick after his strong interim spell in charge last season, but it's clear the team has taken a real step backwards this season.

There are more reasons for that than just Carrick, with the club's recruitment having been poor over the summer. United missed out on their main midfield target after the departure of Casemiro, and while they did end up signing three midfielders, they failed to add adequate cover at left-back and up front.

But ultimately, Carrick's job is to find solutions with the tools he has, and it appears as though he does not have the solutions, and he perhaps lacks the ability to create such solutions.

Carrick appears to be safe for now, but it could be a question of finding the right financial means to sever ties, and it would be a surprise to see the relationship stretching beyond the middle of next month.

The question then becomes who takes over, and former Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe appears as though he could be one of the contenders. Howe left the Magpies after doing some stellar work - which included guiding them into the Champions League - because the North East club decided to sell a number of his best players during the summer, and they were not adequately replaced.

Howe is going to want a very specific club

The problem with hiring Howe is that he isn't just going to take any old job, and he isn't even going to take a big club job for the sake of reputation. Howe has carefully built his reputation, and he has just left a job because the board's actions no longer matched his ambitions.

Back in 2023, Howe made his vision of a successful club perfectly clear when he said: “The way you get there — to be number one — is to have the highest standards you possibly can, to get every area of the club right, whether that’s medical, recruitment, the coaching — everything.”

Now, that could be a big problem for United, a club that has regularly been called out for its slipping standards, be it the stadium, the training ground, the players not living up to top club standards on and off the pitch, the director of football producing sloppy work, the recruitment department doing the same.

United are either going to need a complete makeover prior to hiring Howe, or they are going to have to hand him the keys to the kingdom and ask him to set about fixing those inefficiencies to his own standards.

Meanwhile, Howe has also expressed a clear expectation when it comes to his players, saying all the way back in 2018, during his time at AFC Bournemouth:

“I know we demand a lot from our players. So if a player doesn't have a desire to improve or a thirst for knowledge and doesn't want to grow, it will be difficult for him here.”

That does not sound like this current United squad, with Gary Neville having said: "I live in Manchester - they’re not that professional, some of them.

"I’ve got no time for them. There’s a few of them that don’t go to bed at the right time, don’t eat the right things, don’t think about Manchester United every single minute of every single day - they’re not living and breathing this football club as they should be - like professionals should.”

That means Howe would either have to win over the entire squad or replace many of the players within it, and it would likely have to be a combination of the both.

However you slice all that, Howe has made it clear what he looks for in a club and what he expects from a club. United are a long way from meeting those expectations, and that suggests an uphill task if they should try to convince him to take the Old Trafford job.