There was a time, not too long ago, when Michael Carrick was the answer for Manchester United. He seemed to have the answers, too. Now he is stumped in his search for them. “Certainly, to get to this point, is there’s a lot of questions to find the answers to,” he said.
And this point may be the end point: 16th in the Premier League, 20th in the Champions League, eight games without a win after back-to-back thrashings at the hands of small clubs. Carrick, who had the best record in the Premier League last season after his January appointment, stands on the brink of the sack. Carrick’s regime has crumbled at startling speed, with brutal cruelty to a fundamentally decent man with a genuine affection for the club.
It is part of a cycle at United, whirring around ever quicker as managers come and go. Carrick has been unable to stop history repeating itself at Old Trafford. He has been left wondering why. “If I really had the answer, I wouldn’t have let it happen,” he said. “If I could do something about it and there was something that I could really control, then I wouldn’t have. I would have done I’ve tried to do everything I can to not be in this position.”
A few months ago, Carrick was the manager who came in with the clarity of thought to find a formation straight away, the credibility and personality to get the support of his players, the decisiveness to make a series of successful substitutions.
Now? He lost to Bournemouth using Ruben Amorim’s system and with the armband worn by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s chosen captain, Harry Maguire. The skipper who won Footballer of the Year after the initial, dramatic improvement under Carrick, Bruno Fernandes, was dropped after criticising the manager’s tactics, and left unused on the bench as a misfit, Joshua Zirkzee, and a teenager, Shea Lacey, came on ahead of him.
A relationship feels fractured; perhaps not turning to Fernandes was a sign Carrick realised he had reached the end. The Portuguese has been by far United’s best player since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, but he lost form towards the end of Erik ten Hag’s reign. The accusation is that too many United footballers help get managers the sack. Carrick could join the list of the dismissed.
He has not had the answer to his players’ underachievement. The list of those who have had poor seasons so far includes virtually everyone: Fernandes and Maguire, but also Senne Lammens, Diogo Dalot, Lisandro Martinez, Ayden Heaven, Andrey Santos, Youri Tielemans and Matheus Cunha.
Nor has Carrick had answers as to their lack of mobility. Too few can run far enough or fast enough and if that suggests pre-season has not left them fit enough, the fault may lie with those who built this slow squad. The Amorim-esque 3-4-3 Carrick used against Bournemouth seemed designed to camouflage the inability of too many players in central positions to cover much distance.
Defensively, he has had few answers. United have conceded early goals in Europe and late ones in England. They have conceded from set-pieces and individual errors. They have conceded to 10 men. They have conceded two goals in swift succession on multiple occasions.
And if much of that suggests they have had insufficient resilience, United arguably have not had enough mental or physical strength. Carrick’s style of management is to try and give his players confidence, to back them. He has not been rewarded. When he required a performance, twice in five days they delivered a surrender.
Too often Carrick, who showed such a sure touch with his selections last season, has seemed to pick the wrong team. It has been altogether harder to work out what the right side would be: sporting director Jason Wilcox left him short-staffed in some positions and short of quality in others. Martinez would agree...
Cunha floundered as a centre-forward but the only specialists are the injury-prone Benjamin Sesko and the inadequate Zirkzee. Only one player’s preferred position is left-back: the injury-prone and currently-injured Luke Shaw. Four others have had to operate there, none with conspicuous success.
Then there is the midfield, the area Carrick used to patrol. His only partnership to work was Casemiro and Kobbie Mainoo, one gone, the other now sidelined. Wilcox’s £155m overhaul was supposed to alter that. Carlos Baleba at least began well but, like many a United signing, has since seemed to regress alarmingly. Tielemans seems unable to operate in a midfield duo and Carrick has shunted him further forward. It is an accurate reflection of Santos’s mediocrity that he has started six matches and United have lost five of them.
Perhaps Carrick, whose time at Middlesbrough began promisingly and then tailed off, is a manager who runs out of answers. There was at least a meritocratic element to his appointment at Old Trafford, after taking 39 points from 17 games in interim charge.
Picking Carrick as caretaker was a rare thing Wilcox and chief executive Omar Berrada have got right. Sacking him, two months into a season, will underline their otherwise wretched record. Because if Carrick does not have the answers to fix United, there is no indication they do either.