Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Diogo Dalot, Scott McTominay and Anthony Elanga; they all need it. Rashford and Sancho, in particular, need it. They desperately need someone to work with them and develop them. Rashford has never had that throughout his career at United. He burst onto the scene at 19 but has never been properly coached and, at 24, is moving into a critical phase – and it is also known in football that he is greatly admired by Pochettino. If Mbappe had left PSG then they may well have made a late move for Rashford. That shows how highly-rated he is.

So Pochettino remains, as has been the case for months, top of United’s list. That has not changed and is becoming more and more likely. “If it is him, he will be given time,” a senior United source said and that, also, has to be the case at a club that has flailed around for so long chasing success without having a coherent strategy.

There are other names on that list such as Erik ten Hag but it appears Pochettino is the one and also the one that the players favour.

Should Julian Nagelsmann suddenly become available then that may change things but there is no indication whatsoever that his work is done at Bayern Munich where he is still in his first season. One day, though, the 34-year-old German will come to the Premier League and it will lead to an almighty scramble.

United are moving into – yet another – critical phase. It is one they have to get right (how many times have we said that) and with a new chief executive Richard Arnold and a relatively new technical team plus a meaningful role to find for Rangnick beyond this campaign. At present he is to be retained for the next two years as a “consultant”. Whatever that means.

Sources say that Arnold has inherited a “process” with work regularly being done as to who the next manager will be and United fans will desperately hope that is the case so that the club pushes the button at the right moment.

Otherwise why hire an interim and why go through all this? If United fail to act decisively then it would be a negligent failure. And there have been a few of those in recent years at Old Trafford.