Howe or Nagelsmann: what I would check before United call either
Manchester United lost 2-0 at Chelsea on Saturday. That is one league win in nine, seven points, and no league win since 30 August. Bookmakers now make Michael Carrick 1/5 to be the next Premier League manager sacked.
The two names most reported for his job, Eddie Howe and Julian Nagelsmann, are both out of work. Howe stepped down at Newcastle at the end of July to take a break. Nagelsmann left Germany in July after their World Cup exit, and Jürgen Klopp replaced him. And yet, after the 3-0 home defeat by Bournemouth a week earlier, United's board reportedly kept Carrick because its leaders could not agree on who should follow him.
Appointing the head coach is the biggest decision a sporting director makes. This is how I would make this one.
The main measure here is chance difference: the quality of the chances a team creates minus the quality of the chances it allows, per league game. It uses non-penalty xG (expected goals: how many goals a chance is worth on average, based on thousands of similar shots). Over a season it tells you more about how good a team is than points do, because points swing on finishing and goalkeeping. All data is from Understat for league games, and from Transfermarkt for transfer fees.
