Mauricio Pochettino is the only candidate Manchester United should consider

He's magic you know.

Mauricio Pochettino announced himself as a manager on the greatest stage of them all as he led 13-1 shots Espanyol to a shock derby victory over Pep Guardiola's Barcelona at Camp Nou in February 2009.

It was Pochettino's first win as a manager and set him on the way to becoming something very special. The then 36-year-old was given the reins at Espanyol as Barcelona's second club were heading for the second division, four points adrift of safety and on a dreadful run.

They had not won for 111 days and nearly 27 years had passed since Espanyol last triumphed at Camp Nou with The Guardian's Sid Lowe writing that "it was like fighting King Kong with a teaspoon."

Well the beast of Barcelona was defeated 2-1 and it kickstarted Espanyol's astonishing rise. They had looked relegation good things in January but were a top-half team come the end of the season.

Pochettino had well and truly arrived, or at least he had in Spain, but when he was named as Southampton's new manager in January 2013 the Argentinian was a far from universally popular choice to replace Nigel Adkins.

Former Saints manager Lawrie McMenemy said at the time: "With due respect to Pochettino, what does he know about our game? What does he know about the Premier League? What does he know about the dressing room? Does he speak English?"

Meanwhile, The Times ran an article with the headline: "Has Nicola Cortese found himself a puppet in Mauricio Pochettino?"

Pochettino was no puppet, just an ace string-puller as it transpired and his 18 months at Southampton earned him a move to Tottenham after guiding Saints to eighth in the Premier League, beating Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea along the way.

However, it was the 2014 switch to Spurs that has propelled him to the higher echelons of the game. Poch has changed the culture of a club infamously described by Sir Alex Ferguson as "only Tottenham" during one teamtalk.

Pochettino has finished fifth, third, second and third in his four Premier League seasons at Spurs and also reached one League Cup final, two FA Cup semi-finals and the knockout stages of the Champions League twice.

The fact that this is now seen as the norm for Tottenham highlights the brilliance of the job he has done, on a fraction of the budget of the fellow members of the big six and with a wage bill that shames many. They are not so Spursy after all.

Pochettino will rarely give gold dust to the waiting journalists during his pre- and post-match press conferences. He says as much as he can without saying anything at all, preferring to save his time and energy for the training ground where his work comes alive.

The answer to problems for Pochettino does not come in spending but improving players as people off the pitch as well as footballers on it.

Full-backs Kieran Trippier and Ben Davies were signed from Burnley and Swansea respectively but look at them now. Trippier was the best right-back at the World Cup and Davies was outstanding as a centre-back in Wednesday's 2-0 League Cup win at Arsenal.

Eric Dier started his Spurs career as a makeshift right-back – now he is England's holding midfielder – juggernaut Moussa Sissoko arrived as a joke and is now anything but a laughing matter for opponents trying to stop his latest lung-bursting runs.

Danny Rose? Improved. Jan Vertonghen? Improved. Paulo Gazzaniga? Yep, you guessed it, he has improved, and you could go on and on. At the heart of Pochettino's preaching, though, is a desire to trust youngsters.

Whether it is Ryan Mason or Harry Kane, Harry Winks or Oliver Skipp, Poch is the ideal leader for a youth-team coach looking to sell the dream to academy products of a pathway through to the senior side.

But where are the trophies, I hear you ask? Pochettino's work at Spurs is bigger than a League Cup, FA Cup or Europa League and, as he said himself, Tottenham are driving in the same race as England's other top clubs but in a very different car.

It's a bit like successful betting. Look at the process and get that bit right so the long-term results take care of themselves.

If Manchester United have any kind of sense – and questions must be asked in that regard after making a mess of so many different aspects since Ferguson retired – they will throw everything at trying to force Pochettino out of White Hart Lane ... if the new stadium is ever reopened.

United should have gone for Pochettino after David Moyes and they should have gone for him after Louis van Gaal. They simply have to try to get him after the Jose Mourinho debacle.

Michael Carrick, Teddy Sheringham and Dimitar Berbatov all made successful moves from north London to Old Trafford but the concern for United is a doubt as to whether they are that big an attraction anymore.

Would Pochettino be better off waiting for Real Madrid? Or maybe even staying at Spurs, where his position could be like a person who has patiently filled up the fruit machine only for someone else to come along and collect the jackpot?

Tottenham's supporters and players will hope he remains, but then again, when the fun stops, stop.

Whatever Pochettino decides, he is likely to be a success because he is one of the best managers around. He can coach improvement in players, he rarely blames officials for defeats, connects a club to its fans and plays some of the best football anywhere, all the while understanding how to manage upwards to the paymasters.

He's magic you know.

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