With Ten Hag sack in the books at last, who’s next under the spotlight? Howe sack, please

Finally, the Erik Ten Hag Manchester United Sack Saga is over. At long last he has been removed, and in the end all it took was finally actually suffering the kind of unlucky, ignorable defeat the poor fella has been convinced he’s been on the receiving end of every other weekend for about 18 months now.

But time and tabloid attention wait for no man. Sure, there’s a brief little flurry now where everyone’s distracted by United going about the business of appointing Ruben Amorim as their next victim.

And United being United, the ‘in place by Chelsea’ stuff is already looking a touch vulnerable – there’s every chance we’ve a few days of Amorim release clause and backroom staff compensation to and fro to enjoy yet.

But in time this too shall be completed. As the days pass, everyone will finish speculating on who might play wing-back in Amorim’s 3-4-3, or introducing us to his WAG, or calling him ‘Mourinho 2.0’ on account of him being Portuguese and how everyone from a country is basically the same person aren’t they, and it’ll all die down.

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And at that point, we’re all going to need a new target, aren’t we? Ten Hag and United have been providing a lot of cover for a lot of clubs and a lot of managers. That’s gone now, at least until Amorim loses two games in a row over the Busy Festive Period and everyone can start questioning whether he has the minerals for Our Game. Never done it outside Portugal, has he? Different game, isn’t it?

Sure, that’s coming, but it’s several weeks away yet. There is a honeymoon period coming and tradition dictates we all have to respect it.

So who’s the next mark, then? A quick glance at the Sack Race reveals Russell Martin and Gary O’Neil as the table-toppers. With all due respect, that just isn’t going to work. We need a bigger name than that. With the very best will in the world, who’s going to the trouble of cracking a Southampton badge? Exactly.

Pep Guardiola may well leave Man City at the end of his latest trophy-hoarding season, but it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest there’s some kind of crisis at his unbeaten table-toppers, especially with the annual tradition of the mugging by Tottenham safely tucked out of the way in the Carabao where nobody will remember it. Arsenal and Liverpool can be ruled out, obviously, while even the ever-reliable crisis-club-column-inch-fillers at Chelsea are annoyingly refusing to play along this season under Enzo Maresca.

With Aston Villa also determinedly not in a crisis, we’re really left with only two options. And our vote for manager we’d like to see occupy the crucial Barclays role of always being one or two off-colour results from the sack is Mr Eddie Howe.

It won’t happen, because as the only English manager entrusted with a big-club gig it won’t do to try and hound him out of it. But he’s been getting off lightly, and somebody needs to be under the spotlight now and frankly it has to be him.

The only other real option is Ange Postecoglou, who has built a magnificently brittle and spectacularly Spurs side at great expense in North London. The problem is, Clive, if anything he’s almost built it too well.

They’re just a bit too much fun. They’ve scored more goals than Arsenal this season, and their current run of form is a thumping 4-1 win from behind against West Ham, an execrable defeat at previously winless Crystal Palace, and that brilliant 2-1 win over City in the Carabao. They did another win over someone in the Europa along the way as well, the significance of which – almost certainly something close to zero – won’t actually be measurable even by top soccer boffins for several months.

But the key point is that this is not a manager or team you want to shift off their current course. They are already the Premier League’s most reliable content creators, delivering great goals, calamitous defeats, extremely amusing defending and wider-impact wins on the regular. Ange stays. Spurs must remain Spurs.

And that leaves Howe. We’ve got to get some momentum going around him facing the axe. Maybe even suggest he has only four games to save his job or some such. He certainly can’t complain if whispers start after a run of two points in Newcastle’s last five Premier League games sent them plummeting into mid-table on the back of a deeply deceptive start in which four unconvincing performances somehow yielded 10 improbable points.

They’re doing quite badly – except in the Carabao, but the most important thing about the Carabao is that it’s only important when you want it to be and ignorably meaningless when you don’t – but crucially they’re also doing quite badly quite boringly.

Newcastle weren’t really very good last season either, but they were tremendous fun. Alexander Isak was genuinely one of the very best strikers in the division, while everyone agreed Anthony Gordon and Bruno Guimaraes were top-tier Barclays talent.

Only the top three outscored Newcastle last season, with none of the rest coming particularly close, but Howe’s side also contrived to concede more goals than Spurs and very nearly as many as Chelsea at their least serious in 20 years. There were damn near 150 goals in Newcastle games last season. That’s the good stuff, and who cares if it all leaves you facing the mortifying reality of finishing level on points with Man United and their cracked badge and their leaking stadium and their fraudulent manager.

This year, though? Drab. You can be dull in the Premier League and you can be ineffective, but you won’t get away for long with being both. Howe’s Newcastle are currently ineffectively dull.

They’ve scored fewer goals than all 11 of the teams currently above them in the table as well as several of those below. Only Southampton, Palace and the established disaster that is Man United have managed fewer than Newcastle’s nine goals. To make matters worse, they’ve conceded only 10, which is also quite boring.

You can argue this is unfair all you like, but the Premier League followers must have their bread and circuses, and it might just be Newcastle’s turn to provide them. And let’s face it, it’s not like finishing seventh last year and on current evidence going backwards from there was ever part of the grand Newcastle blueprint after finishing fourth and becoming the richest club on the planet, is it?

If anything, this attention is overdue. With Ten Hag now gone at last, the full glare of the Sack Race spotlight must fall on another, and Eddie Howe – standard bearer for the largely non-existent next generation of English managers – appears the likeliest candidate we currently have.

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