Some Man Utd fans might not like it but Gareth Southgate could make the club whole again

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For all the talk about the myriad facets needed to be a successful manager of an elite football team, there is one quality that trumps all others. Get the best out of the players. Simple as that.

Yes, being a good communicator with the wider audience outside the dressing room can help. Getting on with the suits upstairs clearly helps, as Ruben Amorim can testify. Having a good agent, knowing good agents, helps. Not being English, that also helps, it seems. But the bottom line is that if you get the very best out of what is at your disposal, you will make a decent fist of things.

As England manager, Gareth Southgate was many things. He was, indeed, a good communicator. He was a Football Association man, to the blazer born. He was a diplomat. He was squeaky-clean. He ruffled a few feathers.

But those traits were merely bit-part reasons why England reached two European Championship finals, one World Cup semi-final and a World Cup quarter-final under his guidance. The main reason is he got the best out of the players at his disposal. Big players responded to Southgate’s management.

Harry Kane and Declan Rice are now titans of the game, class-leading global players. And they would have got there via their own determination and talent.

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But speak to both of those players and they will tell you what they see as the hugely important role Southgate played in their development as footballers, professionals and individuals. And they are not the only ones from the England squads of the past decade.

For those of us who closely covered the long camps for his four major tournaments as national boss, it was obvious the admiration and respect from players was pretty much total. And the same goes for his staff - and his bosses.

With his friend’s time in power at Old Trafford proving to be brief, the case for Southgate has lost a boardroom advocate. But just because Dan Ashworth is no longer there, that should not dissuade Sir Jim Ratcliffe from looking towards Southgate.

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Apparently, the two have spoken recently. I’m not sure Southgate’s politics would match Sir Jim’s but it would be a minor hurdle. There are, though, a couple of main planks to the counter-Southgate argument put forward by what seems to be a large swathe of the United fanbase.

He was rubbish as Middlesbrough manager, for starters. True, but that was over 16 years ago and he has done a lot of management and coaching learning since then.

And mainly, they say, his style of play is ultra-conservative. Well, it’s not buccaneering, that is for sure.

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But England scored 213 goals in his 102-match reign. At tournaments, they often played percentage football that is often seen in that context but at World Cup 2022, his team scored 13 times in five games.

But no, maybe he is not overly adventurous. Maybe, though, organisation, a clear plan, and motivation are what this disparate and dysfunctional squad has desperately needed for a very, very long time.

There have been suggestions that 55-year-old Sir Gareth might not want the stress that would inevitably go with such a pressurised role. But at the very least, Sir Jim should make it his business to find out.

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