Gareth Southgate has made his plans clear amid Manchester United links

Gareth Southgate has already declared that he will not coach a team in the next year, amid links with replacing Erik ten Hag as Manchester United manager.

Ten Hag was dismissed from his role at Old Trafford on Monday after a 2-1 defeat at West Ham in the Premier League on Sunday.

Defeat to the Hammers left the Red Devils 14th in the table with just 11 points from their first nine league games, scoring just eight goals in that time.

European results have not been any better, with three draws from their opening three games in the Europa League, including a limp stalemate at home against FC Twente.

Ten Hag, who took over in the summer of 2022 and won the FA Cup and Carabao Cup with the club, has now been dismissed with Ruud van Nistelrooy stepping in as interim boss.

The former Manchester United striker is favourite to get the job on a permanent basis but other candidates are in the running, including Xavi Hernandez, Julian Nagelsmann, Thomas Frank, Ruben Amorim and Southgate.

However, the former England manager spoke out on his future earlier this month and made it clear that he does not want to return to management any time soon.

‘I won’t coach in the next year, for sure,’ Southgate said at the ECA Europe general assembly. ‘I’m certain of that.

‘I need to give myself time to make good decisions. When you come out of a really big role you need to give your body time, you need to give your mind time.’

Southgate stepped down as England manager after six years following the Three Lions’ defeat to Spain in the 2024 European Championship final.

The 53-year-old managed England at four major tournaments, also reaching the final of Euro 2020 while going deep at back-to-back World Cups.

Southgate was named as the ‘obvious choice’ for the Manchester United job by ex-England star Joe Cole.

‘Gareth Southgate is the obvious choice for Manchester United,’ he told Paddy Power.

‘If you look at the ownership group, with Dan Ashworth – he worked with Southgate at the FA and it’s actually reminds me a lot with when Gareth took over at England and having to steady the waters.

‘The fans weren’t happy, and he managed to galvanise them and it might be the right place at the right time for Gareth and I hate talking about next managers when the manager is still in play but it’s really tough to look at Manchester United and – knowing how football is – know that they must be thinking about doing something.

‘Erik ten Hag is a top manager, and he’d walk away with his head high and silverware on the table – like he did at Ajax. He’ll get another job and that might suit his style a bit better.’

But Manchester United legend Gary Neville has said the club’s fans would have reservations if Southgate was to arrive in the Old Trafford hot-seat.

‘I said last season that I’ve never seen Gareth as a fit for Manchester United or Manchester United to be a fit for Gareth,’ the ex-United and England right-back said on The Overlap US.

‘I’ve never seen it as something, to be fair, the club would do, I’ve never seen it as something Manchester United would do.

‘The only connection I see is that Dan Ashworth has worked with Gareth and Gareth has done a very good job with England but I’ve never seen that connection before.

‘Manchester United fans are a bunch of people who have feeling, who have a spirit, and I don’t think they’re connected to this idea yet.

‘Gareth could do exactly what he’s done with England if he was to come in the next few months or year or whatever it may be and completely change people’s thinking and change the dynamic around the decision.

‘But actually pre-the move, he would come in, not unusually for him because he came into the England job with not a lot of love, but he would be coming into Manchester United with, not necessarily not a lot of love, but coming in with scepticism.

‘There is no doubt about that from Manchester United fans. He would know that.’

Neville believes United could benefit from lining up with a three-man defence in order to provide more solidity to the team.

Asked if Van Nistelrooy can immediately instill a new identity in the team after Ten Hag’s exit, Neville told Sky Sports: ‘I mean it’ll be almost impossible wouldn’t it, for him to do that in the next few days.

‘What’s he going to be able to do? He can set the team up differently, I mean that’s something that could happen, he could make the make-up of the team slightly different.

‘But he’s been on the bench with Erik ten Hag so I’d be amazed if there something drastic happened in the next few days in the games that he’s got to manage.

‘I think that ultimately there needs to be quite a lot of work done with those players because at this moment in time they are desperately struggling.

‘Erik ten Hag has not been able to get a consistent level of performance out of them and a lot of those players now are his players, he was backed in the summer and that ultimately I think is a big factor in this.

‘Ruud van Nistelrooy will do his very best, I have thought for a number of months that looking at the players United have they may be better suited to going three at the back, just purely because of a lack of a centre-back pairing and the full-backs, to be fair, look better going forward than they do defensively. So maybe that could happen, maybe that might give them a little bit more comfort because it would give them an extra body at the back but also get the players into a system whereby they’ve got more support.

‘That’s something I’ve thought for a few months, but whether Ruud does that and whether that’s the right way to go I’m not sure. It’s ultimately in this moment in time something that we’ll see against Leicester on Wednesday night whether he believed in what Erik was doing because he’ll pick a different team if he didn’t.’

This article was first published on 10 October 2024.

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