Manchester United: Gary Neville conflicted over Ole Gunnar Solskjaer vs Mauricio Pochettino

Gary Neville is conflicted over who he would like to see become Manchester United’s next permanent manager, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Mauricio Pochettino considered leading candidates.

Solskjaer was appointed as United’s caretaker manager before Christmas following the dismissal of Jose Mourinho and turned the club’s fortunes around quickly, winning eight of his first nine games.

Senior Old Trafford officials did not consider Solskjaer as a permanent candidate for the role when he arrived and nor did Neville, who spent 11 years playing alongside Solskjaer at United under Sir Alex Ferguson.

However, United’s resurgence under Solskjaer – which includes a victory over Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley last month – has put him in contention with both the clubs’ hierarchy and his old team-mate.

Neville previously saw Pochettino as a “natural choice” but now feels that Solskjaer could give United’s Glazer family owners and executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward a difficult decision to make by the end of the season.

“Ole is my great friend, as you all know, and I said United should go for the best off-the-pitch football brain in the world [as director of football] and the best head coach in the world they can get,” he said. “And if that’s Ole at the end of the season...

“I always go back to [the fact] that Pochettino always was the one who stood out for me as the one, in terms of the football, values and bringing through young players, like what he’s done at Tottenham and Southampton. Over a period of time it feels to me like he would be the natural choice.

“However, you look at what [Vicente] Del Bosque did at Real Madrid when he picked up the team, or like what [Roberto] Di Matteo did in that six months at Chelsea. It feels like what Ole’s doing, like he’s having that sort of time now.”

Neville stopped short of fully endorsing either Solskjaer or Pochettino for the permanent job, having previously described the Tottenham manager as the “ideal” candidate at the time of Mourinho’s dismissal.

However, the ex-England international now believes that his friend and former team-mate Solskjaer could make the job his own by qualifying for next season’s Champions League and winning silverware.

“I do have conflicting views,” Neville said. “Personally, I would want [Solskjaer] to have a shot at the job he’s got now.

“But on the other hand I want the club to make an unemotional decision – that is, is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer the best person for the job?

“If the answer is yes at the end of the season because he’s got them into the top four and they’ve won the FA Cup, you’d say: ‘How can you not give him the job?’

“I’d have said no six weeks ago, but seeing the job Ole’s now done... We have to judge it at the end of the season.

“I said to someone last week, whatever Manchester United do, they cannot allow a manager to walk through those doors ever again and bring their own philosophy that sits outside the principles of what United are – which is entertaining, attacking football, playing with risk with young players that come through the academy.”