Jamie Carragher on why Manchester United’s Erik Ten Hag appointment would be a ‘brave choice’ over this rival

Jamie Carragher has called Manchester United’s potential appointment of Erik ten Hag ‘brave’.

The latter is the bookies’ favourite to take the hot seat at Old Trafford, beating Mauricio Pochettino and other candidates to the role.

United are ‘close to finalising’ an agreement for Ten Hag, according to Sky Sports, who claim the 52-year-old impressed the Red Devils’ board in his interview.

However, Carragher thinks the club’s decision to pick the Dutchman over an established name is a ‘brave’ one.

“They’ve always gone with the established name if you like in terms of Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal,’’ he told CBS Sport.

“They went with Ole [Gunnar Solskjaer], who was the easy choice. The brave choice would have been not to go with Ole because he had such a good time to start with as a caretaker.”

The ex-England international discussed why he thinks United have ‘picked’ Ten Hag over other candidates and claims the 52-year-old will need to make some bold choices if appointed.

“So what I mean by this is he’s not managed at a big club and he is seen as this up-and-coming coach, ‘he’s new, he’s fresh’ and Pochettino’s not, he’s actually older than Pochettino, which some people don’t seem to actually know,” he added.

“I don’t think he’s getting picked for the fact of just what he’s done for Ajax in terms of being successful because you expect that at Ajax.

“But what they’ve done in the Champions League in terms of getting to the semi-final, how they play their football, their performance in the group stage this season.

“They’ll be disappointed to go out to Benfica but I think it’s a brave choice because I do think Manchester United now need to start making brave decisions, and some of them about the players as well, in terms of Pogba and Cristiano Ronaldo need to go.”

Ten Hag has been in charge of Ajax since December 2017, guiding them to two Eredivisie titles and the same number of Dutch Cups.

Ajax are on course to add another league title to their trophy cabinet this season, with the Dutch side top of the table, four points ahead of PSV with six games remaining.