Forget Reuben Amorim for just for one second. Man United are thinking about replacing goalkeeper André Onana with an epileptic Thalidomide impaled on a clothes prop.

A tasered flid would after all fare better with crosses than a poundshop Baron Samedi with two left hands.

Amorim himself has demonstrated success only in outpacing the frenetic drive of meme culture. Try as they might, the wags just can’t keep up. Reub’s the gimp that keeps on gimping. He couldn’t even face the Grimsby spot-kicks and was captured on camera looking away for all 23 of them. As a result, in terms of the ladder of tactical and strategic nous, Kwasi Kwarteng can breathe a sigh of relief that he’s now off the bottom rung.

The cat is now so far out of the bag that even Harvey Weinstein’s rollator has garnered more credibility than the Amorim Manchester CV. What was initially spun as refreshingly honest appraisals in the aftermath of a string of dickings have now been rumbled as the desperate ramblings of an imposter who is starting to make Gareth Southgate look like a credible alternative.

First rule of shite club. Don’t talk about shite club.

That Temu magnetic football board has probably done for him, though, and you just know that Gareth is just one rim job away from the Amorim job.

Graham Potter was a previously favoured candidate, but he is thankfully rolling out his Man United tenure in safe mode at West Ham, so the Hammers hierarchy can helpfully cast him appropriately into oblivion at a safe distance.

And now for a trip down memory lane.

I remember being in the cinema nearly two decades ago and spitting out my watered-down, remortgage-worthy Coke Zero when I first heard a truly pertinent line from Ocean’s Thirteen. Reuben – no relation – remarks that he doesn’t need to pull jobs to keep his hotels solvent. All I could think of was El Tel, along with Sven and all the other phat contract big game hunters, who would submarine the depths of the Premier League, surfacing only to latch onto the forlorn hopes of sinking chairmen via a raft of dodgy Powerpoints. I am after all old enough to remember Sven sniffing around Notts County, if that exquisite absurdity still resonates.

They’re all Notts County nowadays.

Don’t need surprised if any one of the old gang of 1990s pros also expresses an interest in the United role, but those chimps are arguably part of a byegone era of bunco bandits. Now it’s more likely to be the current managers of Crystal Palace or Bournemouth who are going to chance their arm. That they even feel brazen enough to have a punt at the Man U job should tell us just how far we’ve fallen.

Make no mistake, elite football management is plagued by a plethora of shameless charlatans.

The uniform of skinny tracksuit bottoms, polo-necks, chunky-white trainers and the obligatory beard is so obviously comical, it’s taken on a weird sense of caricature. You’re always waiting for the next obscure European to pop up from Serie B, sporting the same old threads and pimping their revelatory philosophy on the game that always simply amounts to the recycled brain-baffling bullshit of the pro badge subculture.

Whatever the flavour of managerial Muzak on offer is, it’ll predictably be topped off with the cherries of UEFA seminar blather and the crazy-man, faux intensity of the apparent tortured genius. They all get found out in the end, but usually only after they’ve inflicted a furious bumraping on the balance sheet of a club that frankly ought to know better. Keeping with the Ocean’s theme, Roman Nagel (Eddie Izzard) said in Ocean’s Twelve that even Morecambe and Wise went off the boil. In this case, it’s more crumb and unwise.

But if we had to settle for a Reuben at the helm, I’d readily prefer Reuben Tishkoff to Amorim – or even the actor Elliott Gould, who plays him. Even he (either persona) wouldn’t chain himself to a 3-4-3 after a gruesome 29-game run punctuated by seismic spankings when it clearly hadn’t paid dividends.

And now for some wider context.

In a week when Turkish clubs bombed previous Old Trafford head honcho incumbents José and Ole for failing to meet second and third string European qualification goals, the current big cheese retains the confidence of the United board after being hoofed out of the Haribo by fourth-tier Grimsby.

It amazes me that these business-savvy owners get so effortlessly striped by these fakes. I guess it’s good old-fashioned despair and a triumph of hope over experience. INEOS might be a petro-giant, but I’m frankly petrified.

I can’t bear to look any longer. It’s almost like a penalty shootout against Grimsby.