OPINION: Eddie Howe has emerged as a leading contender to replace Michael Carrick at Manchester United and Newcastle reporter Sean McCormick can't understand the pushback from fans

It's Groundhog day, again.

Manchester United's decision makers are sharpening their knives and head coach Michael Carrick is preparing for the chop. It has reached that stage in the same, sorry cycle, where the head coach is the fall guy for a club that is rotten from the head down. From the Glazers, to Sir Jim Ratcliffe, to Jason Wilcox, to the players.

Since Sir Alex Ferguson left 13 years ago, Manchester United have not come close to winning the Premier League despite the best efforts of David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Ralf Rangnick, Erik ten Hag, Ruben Amorim and now Carrick, despite hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on the squad.

The Red Devils have not been a genuinely top team since Mourinho's tenure, even if Ten Hag delivered two trophies during his mixed two-and-a-half year stay at Old Trafford.

Clearly what Manchester United need is someone to stabilise them, to bring the best out of a fractured squad and someone with a proven track record of transforming an underperforming squad into contenders.

Of the contenders said to be in line to replace Carrick, former Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe is that man. Antonio Conte is a serial winner with Juventus, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Napoli but a volatile appointment who rarely spends more than two years in any post while Julian Nagelsmann won trophies with Bayern Munich but struggled in the Germany job and has no Premier League experience. Unai Emery won't leave Aston Villa .

Howe turned Newcastle from dreamers to achievers and did so with a mix of very good recruitment but also excellent coaching, with a number of players he inherited from Steve Bruce, who left with Newcastle in 19th place, becoming integral pillars of his side.

From the moment he set foot in Newcastle in 2021, taking over a side that looked dead certainties for relegation, Howe's exciting, attacking philosophy not only put the Magpies back on the front foot but recaptured a fanbase that had been lost in a sea of apathy.

'Intensity is our identity' was Howe's motto and he had a team totally singing from his hymn sheet. They avoided relegation and then they kept winning, kept upsetting the big boys and somehow managed to be both exciting to watch but horrible to play against. Howe said in the aftermath of a gritty draw with Arsenal that his team were 'not here to be popular, we are here to compete', and that summed up his Newcastle team at their best.

In five years, Newcastle qualified for the Champions League twice, reached two cup finals and won the Carabao Cup - ending a 70-year domestic trophy drought - and while the project ran out of steam last season, it was widely accepted that his next role would be a big one.

Howe's success was no new manager bounce, it was sustained, and all of the above is why he is surely an outstanding candidate to revive a global institution like Manchester United that has seriously lost its way.

So to see the fierce opposition from Man United fans online is not only surprising but disappointing and smacks of an entitlement, a delusion and an ignorance of the stability Howe will undoubtedly bring. It's easy to forget Howe's Newcastle won more points than Manchester United across his reign on Tyneside.

I have seen Howe described as the 'most underwhelming appointment in the last 50 years' (he wouldn't be the most underwhelming appointment in the last six months), 'a low IQ manager' who 'failed at Newcastle' and is being pushed because he is English.

For anyone that has seen Howe's work first hand knows that is a load of nonsense and they should be advised to listen to their former captain Roy Keane who backed Howe as the best man for the job back in January when Amorim was peddled.

"I'd go with Eddie Howe. I like him. I like what he's done. He's managed a lot of games. When his teams are at it, they'll play good football. He has his critics, but I like what he's done at Newcastle.

"He's managed seven or 800 games. He's still a young man. I love his calmness. Maybe Man Utd need a little bit of that. We've seen with our previous [appointments], we like people with emotions, but he's got that calmness. The job he's done at Newcastle, Champions League and winning a cup, I'd be happy to see him go in there."

I have no doubt the match-going fans would buy into Howe's methods and it was heartening to see the emotional ovation they gave to Carrick in the aftermath of their 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth on Sunday. The loud boos that followed for the players showed those fans need a reason to believe in those players again and Howe managed to do that in similar circumstances on Tyneside when he took over in November 2021.

You would be hard pressed to find a player Howe has coached who won't speak positively about his methods. Most of them would say he improved them in ways they didn't realise was possible, with players who had long left the club talking about how Howe would continue to check in on their progress and keep in touch when he really didn't need to. That level of man-management will surely re-engage a number of players who look lost in the Old Trafford storm this term.

He spent his 18 months between leaving Bournemouth, who he took from League Two to the top half of the Premier League, and joining Newcastle, meticulously working for hours on end on his training sessions, taking in visits to teams like Atletico Madrid, and refining his methods so that when his next job arrived he was ready to attack it and learn from the mistakes he felt he made towards the end of his time with the Cherries.

Make no mistake about it, he would've already been scribbling away furiously while watching Manchester United matches and he will have clear ideas of how to get the best out of a team that contains players like Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Benjamin Sesko who he wanted to sign at Newcastle.

As with any appointment, there are reasons to have reservations, too. Newcastle fell to seventh and 12th when they had to juggle the Premier League and Champions League and that is a legitimate stick to beat the 48-year-old with. It led to suggestions he reached his ceiling at Newcastle when actually the Premier League's spending rules meant actually Newcastle reached theirs.

The fact he is said to be Wilcox's preferred candidate, too, will rankle with Manchester United fans who want to see the back of their technical director. But he is no yes man, as has been suggested in some quarters. Howe had huge power behind the scenes at Newcastle and his internal struggle with sporting director Paul Mitchell was well documented but he outlasted the former Monaco and RB Leipzig chief.

Howe wanted to take a break from football after leaving Newcastle in July but despite all of their issues, the Manchester United job would be impossible for any ambitious coach to turn down.

But I do wonder whether he will have any second thoughts after seeing some of the vitriolic rubbish spouted about him online before he is even appointed.

Howe's record suggests that, given time, he will have Manchester United tracking upwards and playing football their fans will respond to. He is the manager they need, but perhaps not the one they deserve.