Carlton Cole reveals the first player Brendan Rodgers will ax if he becomes Manchester United manager. It’s not Fred or Pogba

Former West Ham striker, Carlton Cole has backed Brendan Rodgers to go in and take over from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United, following the Norwegian’s sack.

Rodgers is one of the favourites for the job, having achieved successes during his time at Liverpool and Leicester City, and Cole believes he’d be an ideal replacement for Solskjaer.

Cole also believes that if appointed, Rodgers may likely discard star man Cristiano Ronaldo from his team because he’d want to build for the future.

He told talkSPORT: “Leicester fans are going to hate me for this one but I feel Brendan Rodgers could go in and I feel he would be the right man for the Man United job.

“Get rid of Ronaldo, he’s [Rodgers] going to have to usher him out.

“The reason why, because if you have someone like Brendan he wants to build for the future.

“They’ve got a few prospects in that team that have not even played yet, very good players, and there’s talk of Jude Bellingham coming in as well.

“You’ve got to plan for the future – is Ronaldo the future of Man United?

“We know how he wants to play, Brendan Rodgers, he loves the high press, he loves the high energy, working off the ball, he loves that.

“He’ll eradicate the players that are not fitting into that formation or system, he has to otherwise he’s going against his own morals.”