Football - Next Manchester United manager Stan Collymore on Manchester United: Louis van Gaal must go but appointing Ryan Giggs would be HORRIFIC mistake

The Old Trafford icon lacks the experience and possibly the personality for the job and taking it on could spoil his legacy — it's Mourinho they should turn to

Ryan's gig? Giggs was a superb player but showed little sign of being a future manager

 

Like Ryan Giggs, Pep Guardiola was a legend at his club with aspirations to go into management.
But just because Guardiola went on to achieve special things at Barcelona does not ­automatically mean
Giggs will do the same at Manchester United.

Guardiola is one of the most obsessive men you will ever meet in his craft and he has an ability to verbalise his exact thoughts.

Giggs, on the other hand, is quite shy, and sometimes I look at his eyes and wonder what’s going on behind them.

When we were players, there was nothing about him which made me think he’d make a great manager one day, and even though many believe he will succeed the beleaguered Louis van Gaal when time is ­eventually called on his troubled reign, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind.

Trying it on for size: Giggs was briefly caretaker boss in 2014 after United fired David Moyes 

Giggs doesn’t look like a guy who is particularly proactive towards Van Gaal, in terms of his words and actions.

And making him the United manager at this stage of his ­career could be an horrific move in terms of ­destroying the ­legacy of an Old Trafford great.

Like his mate Gary Neville has done, Giggs needs to go off and do the knowledge away from the shadow of the Theatre of Dreams and, should success ­follow then, and only then, would his appointment be worth the risk.

Giggs is too quiet and I don’t see a personality that is ­confident enough to be able to take on the United job.

I never saw it as a player and I don’t see it now.
If we’re being brutally honest, he looks as lost as Van Gaal at times.

In pictures — Southampton beat Man United at a mutinous Old Trafford:

What is happening at United right now beggars belief and in all my years in the game I have never seen a ­demise as painful as Van Gaal’s.

David Moyes’ was quite ­distressing and I remember thinking to myself, ‘It’s blatantly obvious he can’t fill the shoes of Sir Alex Ferguson’.

But for a guy to have spent ­quarter of a billion pounds only for his team to have got significantly worse will for ever be one of the least-wanted landmark achievements in English football.

The boos at Old Trafford last weekend were incredible, with most United fans turning on Van Gaal.
And the only reason I can think of for such a wholesale swing is that a lot of them are putting two and two together and making five.

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Giggs, of course, is available, and so too is Jose Mourinho.

 

He's the one: United can't miss out on the available Jose Mourinho as well as Pep Guardiola 

And even though Manchester City appear to have lined up Guardiola, the rumours which emerged of the Spaniard ­meeting United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward in Paris have also added to the clamour for Van Gaal to go.

It looks like Woodward is happy to have a bun-fight with City at the end of the season for Guardiola, but as I wrote here over Christmas, for me there is only one option for the red half of the Manchester as far as I can see.
United HAVE to pounce while Mourinho is out of work.

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The worst of all scenarios would be for Manchester United Football Club to go into next season having missed out not only on Guardiola, but Mourinho as well.

I was asked last week if I think what is happening to Van Gaal at the moment is ­inhumane, a professional slow death. But he’s a big boy and he’s very well paid.

On top of that, I remember being at his last game in charge of Barcelona when, almost to a man, the home crowd were waving white ­handkerchiefs at the Dutchman.

That’s when things are bad — when you’ve 100,000 people telling you to go.

I hear United old boy Neville has been getting similar in Valencia – in Spain, when they turn they turn in a much more vicious way than we do over here.

What I can’t quite ­believe is why Van Gaal has been so stuck in his ways.

All he had to do was yield and bend a bit towards the United traditions and they could have lost games this season 4-3 or 5-2 and it wouldn’t have ­mattered as much because, as long as the attacking football was there, fans would have said that after the dull, pedestrian football of Moyes there was at least some progress.

Heroes to zeroes: United haven't scored in the first half of a home game since September 

But this is the second ­manager who has taken them further away from what they believe to be their birthright of widemen, creativity and attacking football played at a high tempo.

I played against the United teams of Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis, Eric Cantona, Giggs, the Neville brothers Gary and Phil, Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister and Peter Schmeichel.

They gave you a chance to play football, but you always knew that you would be in for a cracking game.

This season, they’ve been 0-0 time and again at half-time – like a modern-day version of 1-0 to the Arsenal – without the winning.

LVG is obviously the man to blame, but he won’t walk away. He has said he will ­retire to his Portuguese paradise in 18 months, so why not sit tight and wait for the push so he can pocket a tidy lump sum?

That’s what it looks like to me.

But when push does come to shove, it’s Mourinho and not Giggs that United must turn to.