Soccer: Great Old Trafford guessing game

When his team played Newcastle United seven years ago this month, Sir Alex Ferguson came down the tunnel at St James Park, arms linked with his opposite number, Sir Bobby Robson.

It was one of those great moments that football throws up occasionally, a brief, heartfelt pause in hostilities between two fierce competitors.

Just to prove the point that it was temporary, Ferguson was sent off halfway through the first half for abusing referee Uriah Rennie, demonstrating that his temper can go from 0 to 60 in the space of a few seconds.

In 2003, the late Robson had turned 70, which is, incidentally, the landmark Ferguson will reach at the end of next year. This will be his last entire season as a man in his seventh decade and, although one does not wish to usher him impolitely towards retirement, the whole subject of his going is not the taboo at United it once was.

That much was evident when the Manchester United chief executive, David Gill, discussed the matter of Ferguson's successor in May. The issue occupies the minds of those in charge at Old Trafford as Ferguson began his 25th season managing United against Newcastle early today.

Gill conceded that an integral problem in planning ahead for such a momentous decision was the rapidity with which any manager's stock can rise and fall.

The field, even 12 months ago, looked very different. Jose Mourinho had won the title at Internazionale but his team were brittle when confronted with United in the Champions League. Now he looks like a genius again.

One year ago, Martin O'Neill lost his opening game of the season to Wigan and was struggling with a team that had fallen apart after February.

He won his second game at Anfield and six months later he had revived Aston Villa. After his abrupt departure last week, it is more difficult to predict how Gill and United will regard him.

The managerial star of English football last summer - whom sensible people saw as a potential successor to Ferguson - was Fabio Capello. What a difference a year makes. The World Cup made Capello look old-fashioned and out-of-touch. He was out-manoeuvred by a younger coach in Germany's Joachim Low. His poor grasp of English does him no favours. His age - at 64 he is only four years younger than Ferguson - looks more and more a problem.

The question of Ferguson's successor is as open and as intriguing as ever. It could be, as with Mourinho when he got the Chelsea job in 2004, a coach who comes from relative obscurity to European-wide acclaim in the space of one season.

Yet even Mourinho had won the Uefa Cup the previous season. Now there is no obvious candidate.

The field is open for someone new - perhaps even a British coach - to make the running should Ferguson decide this is to be his final season.

David Moyes, who at 46 looks the closest like-for-like replacement for the 44-year-old Ferguson who was appointed by United in November 1986, has a wonderful opportunity.

His Everton team have finished sixth, fifth, fifth and eighth in the past four seasons and Gill will be aware of the financial restrictions that come with managing the club.

A flick through this year's Champions League coaches throws up interesting possibilities, such as Didier Deschamps (Marseille), Claude Puel (Lyons) and Pep Guardiola (Barcelona). Germany's Low and Bert van Marwijk of the Netherlands had good summers, although there is not much scope for managers of national teams to dazzle over the next 12 months.

Whatever the restrictions of the Glazer ownership, whatever the pressure it brings, managing United is the most attractive job in English club football. At the very least, it is among the best three jobs in European football.

The theory that whoever follows Ferguson will automatically go the same way as Wilf McGuinness - the successor to Sir Matt Busby - is just superstitious nonsense.

There is no inevitability that history will repeat itself. A talented manager in Ferguson's chair could be considered to have achieved great things without having to match Ferguson's achievements.

But it can't be assumed Mourinho, clearly the manager of the moment in European football, could simply be summoned with a crooked finger to Old Trafford were he to find life to his liking at Real Madrid this season. That is another element to the great race of succession.

- INDEPENDENT