Tottenham Hotspur were struggling in ninth position, already five points adrift of a top-four spot in the Premier League, when Antonio Conte was charged with saving the club’s season last November. A month later, Ralf Rangnick started his role as interim manager at Manchester United with his team sitting in seventh and a three-point gap to fourth place.
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With just over a month of the season left to play, it is clear that one of those appointments has worked and the other patently hasn’t. Spurs are now three points clear of the chasing pack in fourth, while United are still in seventh, but closer to eighth-placed Wolves than Tottenham, who are six points ahead of Rangnick’s faltering team.
The United hierarchy are probably too busy trying to finalise their move to hire Ajax coach Erik ten Hag to consider the irony of their decision to reject Conte and recruit a manager more in keeping with their so-called DNA following the dismissal of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer last November, but the contrasting fortunes of Conte and Rangnick show that changing a manager midseason is not always a guarantee of a positive impact.
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United sources told ESPN in January that they overlooked Conte — who was out of work at the time after his exit from Inter Milan — as Solskjaer’s replacement because he was too abrasive and demanding of his players. The view within the Old Trafford boardroom was that the United squad would not embrace Conte’s very particular approach of giving his players specific instructions, that he would “overload them with information,” and that the team needed a more cerebral coach — one who would treat them as the high-calibre players that they are deemed to be.
When you strip it back, that explanation of United’s decision not to hire Conte may actually mean that the former Juventus, Chelsea and Inter Milan coach was too…
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