There was a time not so long ago when the role of England manager was extensively acknowledged to be The Impossible Job. As Thomas Tuchel prepares for his first games in the national post by working from home for a chunk of his time, that is no longer the case.

But it is becoming increasingly evident that The Impossible Job in football management is now the one at Old Trafford. Which is why a failure to last a serious amount of time in the position is not even close to being a stain on a managerial CV.

If Ruben Amorim was gone before the start of next season, he would still be in demand for plum club jobs. Over the past couple of days, Erik ten Hag has been speaking eloquently about his time at United.

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The Dutchman always cut a dignified figure, even when under the most severe pressure. A week before his sacking, he attended a Football Writers Association dinner - despite considerable media criticism of the job he was doing - and talked about his conviction and determination to get things right at Old Trafford.

He didn’t get things right but Ten Hag has had plenty of offers since and there will be plenty on the table when he considers a return to work on July 1 of this year. Being a sacked Manchester United manager is no career-killer, that is for sure.

Over a decade on, David Moyes is reminding us all of what a good operator he is and Jose Mourinho is, of course, Jose Mourinho. Louis van Gaal has only had one job since getting the push after winning the FA Cup in May, 2016, but that was a 20-game stint as Netherlands coach, during which he did not lose a single match.

And then there is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who had almost three years as United manager, arguably producing some of the team’s most entertaining football in recent times, if not producing any silverware. Solskjaer, who turned 52 today, waited for three years before taking another job in management but, although these are very early days, he has made quite the impact at Besiktas.

On Tuesday night, his side won away at Antalyaspor in the Turkish Cup, giving Solskjaer his sixth victory in eight games in charge of the Istanbul club and his fifth on the spin. Their dreadful first half of the season means Besiktas are way adrift of the battle between Galatasaray and Mourinho’s Fenerbahce at the top of the Turkish Super Lig but they are only five points adrift of third-placed Samsunspor, with a game in hand.

More significantly, supporters are flooding social media with praise for the style of play Solskjaer has brought to Besiktas. United fans loved Solskjaer and were fond of Erik ten Hag, who spoke glowingly about those supporters in the recent interview, but they were both dismissed because results were not what a truly elite club demands.

The obvious response is that United has not been run like a truly elite club for some considerable time. And that is why eventual failure in The Impossible Job would deeply hurt Amorim on a personal level but, in a professional sense, would be accepted as just another inevitability of managerial life at dysfunctional Old Trafford.

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