How do Man Utd find their own Jurgen Klopp? Jealous Red Devils are hurting after years of painfully bad appointments - it's high time they got one right

it is worth remembering that history could have turned out very differently had Klopp accepted an offer from then chief executive Ed Woodward to take charge of United in 2014. At the time United's hierarchy were losing faith in David Moyes and Klopp was perhaps the most likable coach in European football, having won successive Bundesliga titles with Borussia Dortmund and reached the Champions League final the year before.

According to Bring The Noise, a book by German journalist Raphael Honigstein, Woodward flew out to meet Klopp and try to convince him to come and coach United. But Klopp was left baffled by the pitch.

"Woodward told Klopp that the Theatre of Dreams was 'like an adult version of Disneyland', a mythical place where, as the nickname suggested, the entertainment was world class and dreams came true," Honigstein wrote. "Klopp wasn't entirely convinced by that sales pitch — he found it a bit 'unsexy', he told a friend — but he didn't dismiss the proposition out of hand either."

Klopp decided to turn down United's approach to remain at Dortmund for one more year before stepping down in 2015 after a dismal final campaign. Klopp found a kindred spirit in Liverpool, seeing in them, rather like Dortmund, a fallen giant in a downtrodden city a with a passionate fan base.

The idea of resuscitating them motivated him, as he later put it: "I was on fire from the first second". Liverpool fans were on board with Klopp before his appointment was even official: 35,000 people tracked his flight from Dortmund to Liverpool John Lennon Airport and scores of fans turned up outside the Hope Street Hotel, where he signed his contract.

No United manager has generated anything like that excitement, not even Ferguson. And that is despite the club appointing some big names with big reputations and achievements since the legendary Scottish manager retired in 2013. The Red Devils have tried almost every single profile of coach but none of them have worked.

At first they sought to hire what they thought was a similar character to Ferguson when they chose David Moyes as his successor. But they soon found that despite Moyes coming from a similar working-class background in Glasgow - and showing loyalty to one club for more than a decade - he lacked the authority, aura and tactical nous of Ferguson.

Moyes soon found out that what worked at Everton did not necessarily work at United and serial winners such as Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic did not take kindly to being asked to play like Phil Jagielka. They struggled to get on board with a manger who had not won a single trophy in a long career. Moyes' reactive style of play did not chime with fans either and it did not work in an increasingly competitive league, with United finishing seventh that season.

There was also an inconvenient truth: Ferguson had left him with an ageing squad full of players who had passed their peak and an overhaul was needed. Moyes was not the right man to lead it. His appointment will go down as one of the worst succession plans in football history.

United chose a radically different candidate to succeed Moyes when they hired Louis van Gaal. The larger-than-life Dutchman was a proven winner and had triumphed in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. But most of his achievements at club level had been long before he took charge at Old Trafford, such as winning the Champions League in 1995 with Ajax.

His brand of possession football, which was not as advanced as that of Barcelona and Bayern Munich at the time and placed no emphasis on pressing, produced one of the blandest eras of football United fans have ever witnessed.

Although there were some good moments, the overall impression was a team only capable of passing the ball sideways and that could bore audiences to sleep. Attendances at Old Trafford dropped and the club became genuinely worried that fans would not want to renew their season tickets.

Van Gaal's unique personality also alienated a fair few players, particularly Memphis Depay and Angel Di Maria, who were both signed for big money but were big disappointments.

With a second managerial appointment going wrong, the club took the obvious choice and hired Jose Mourinho, who everyone considered a born winner and who had lifted the Premier League just one year previously with Chelsea. Woodward conveniently ignored the fact that the Portuguese had also presided over a disastrous season with the Blues and the team were on the brink of the relegation zone when he was sacked.

As he has done at every single club he has coached, Mourinho adopted a policy of divide and rule. While he was worshipped by some players, namely Ander Herrera, he hung many more out to dry. There was some success, with United winning the League Cup and the Europa League, earning a second-placed finish in the Premier League and reaching the FA Cup final.

But those triumphs were overshadowed by devastating defeats in which the team showed no ambition, particularly the home loss by Sevilla to exit the Champions League in 2018. That was when Mourinho showed the nasty side of his character and disrespected the club with his rant about 'football heritage'.

Under the Portuguese, United had become Mourinho FC and the trade off was not worth it as, just like with every previous club, there was a downward spiral in the third season and he was sacked with the team sliding towards mid-table and with a bruised dressing room.

United took another tried-and-tested route after Mourinho's divisive tenure by hiring a club legend to heal the wounds. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had no real managerial pedigree although he was only supposed to be a temporary solution. The appointment went far better than expected as United won 10 games out of 11 and then pulled off a miraculous Champions League comeback win over Paris Saint-Germain.

The club then made the mistake of getting carried away amid the euphoria and gave the Norwegian a permanent contract. Solskjaer's lack of top-level coaching experience soon became obvious and his time with United was littered with shockingly bad moments.

To his credit, he did oversee many unforgettable comebacks and he is the only manager since Ferguson to get the team into the top four in successive seasons. He is also the only coach to engender a real bond with the whole fanbase, and match-going supporters will have fond memories of signing 'Ole's at the wheel, tell me how good does it feel'.

But that connection was mostly down to Solskjaer's legacy as a player and his loyalty to the clu,b rather than his skills as a manager or because he galvanised the fans and players. As he has admitted, the Norwegian could not get the team to take the next step from top-four candidates to title contenders or evolve their style of play from reactive to pro-active. Indeed, by the end of his tenure players had stopped running for him.

It did seem that United had finally appointed the right manager at the right moment in his career when they hired Erik ten Hag in the summer of 2022, just after he had led Ajax to yet another league title.

The Dutchman imposed his authority on the squad, getting the players to run 14 kilometres with him after their dismal defeat by Brentford in his second game in charge, while also showing his ruthless side with his treatment of Cristiano Ronaldo, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and David de Gea.

He led the Red Devils to their first trophy in six years and oversaw their return to the Champions League but his second season has been a huge disappointment. He has already lost as many league games as Moyes did in one season and United face an uphill battle to return to Europe's elite competition.

There has also been little sign of a progressive style of play, with United reverting to the counter-attacking ways of Mourinho and Solskjaer but leaving themselves wide open and conceding the second highest amount of shots in the Premier League.

The Dutchman is running out of time to convince new overlords INEOS that he is the right man to lead the team next season and Graham Potter is among a list of candidates who could succeed him if he does not make it to the summer.

INEOS chief Sir Jim Ratcliffe stopped short of giving Ten Hag his full backing when he spoke to the media last month but he emphasised that the Dutchman is far from the first manager with a good reputation who has struggled at Old Trafford.

"If you look at the 11 years that have gone since David Gill and Sir Alex stepped down, there have been a whole series of coaches — some of which were very good. And none of them were successful or survived for very long. And you can’t blame all the coaches," he said.

"The only conclusion you can draw is that the environment in which they were working didn’t work. And Erik’s been in that environment. I’m talking about the organisation, the people in the structure, and the atmosphere in the club. We have to do that bit. So I’m not really focused on the coach. I’m focused on getting that bit right."

Ratcliffe has wasted no time trying to change the structure at United, appointing Omar Berrada from Manchester City as their next CEO and approaching Newcastle sporting director Dan Ashworth, as well as accelerating plans to develop Old Trafford. And he will soon need to decide what to do with Ten Hag.

There is a school of thought that managers do not make a huge difference to a team and that wage bills are the real factor in determining success. But United's repeated failings fly in the face of such a theory as they have had one of the highest budgets in Europe for the last decade but keep bungling their coaching appointments.

Klopp is also a shining example of the impact that a coach can have as Liverpool were rarely short of money in the past and had one of the largest followings but kept on underachieving until the German's arrival. However, it should be stressed that Klopp could count on an excellent structure around him, built by sporting director Michael Edwards, who has recently returned to Liverpool.

That structure has previously been lacking at United but now it is being built, whoever is in charge next season should have more support than their predecessors. But the team will need a charismatic figure in the dugout as this is very much the era of the manager. All of United's competitors have managers with big personalities which they have successfully imposed on their teams.

Klopp is the ultimate example of the cult of the manager and no matter how much United fans will claim to dislike the German, many would have loved him to have succeeded Moyes when he was offered the position a decade ago by Woodward with that ill-advised 'Disneyland' pitch. United is no longer Disneyland - it is more akin to a rundown, abandoned amusement park. And it desperately needs a new figurehead to steer it back in the right direction.

When it comes to choosing a new coach, United's decision makers would do well to find someone with the same traits as Klopp, someone with the authority to drag the club back up but also the humility to put the the needs of the team above their own. That has been lacking in all of Ferguson's successors and it will be vital to finally putting United back on their perch.