From Champions League finish to drop zone: How Carrick’s reign unravelled

Michael Carrick has been sacked as Manchester United head coach, so how did his Old Trafford reign go so wrong, so quickly?

The former midfielder guided United to a Champions League finish last season but after their worst start to a season in 40 years, they are in the Premier League relegation zone at the start of November.

United salvaged a 4-4 draw against Aston Villa in Carrick’s final game in charge, but they have only won once in 10 Premier League fixtures so far despite finishing last term on a high, with former Spurs and Chelsea boss Mauricio Pochettino set to take over.

The ‘calmness’ before the chaos

Carrick’s impact was immediate after taking over in January. The visit of Manchester City to Old Trafford looked a difficult start but a 2-0 win proved a launchpad. “One of the best performances you’ll see in any era by a United team,” said Gary Neville.

United followed it up with wins over Arsenal, Fulham and Tottenham. It was the first time they had won four straight Premier League games in two years. The mood was transformed.

The club were seventh when Carrick took over. By the end of the season, he had taken them back into the Champions League in third, completing an unlikely turnaround which earned him a nomination for the Premier League Manager of the Year award.

Between his appointment in January and the end of the campaign, Manchester United took more points than even champions Arsenal, with 39, winning 12 out of 17 Premier League games having only won eight of the first 21 in the first half of the campaign.

Carrick’s most impactful change was to do away with Ruben Amorim’s favoured back three system, allowing him to move Bruno Fernandes from the base of midfield, where he had looked a poor fit alongside Casemiro, back into his favoured No 10 role.

The result was an explosion in his creative output. Fernandes’ open-play creativity rose by 81 per cent under Carrick as he broke the Premier League assists record for a single season and ended up as both the PFA and FWA Player of the Year.

“Michael came in with a big personality but also with a lot of calmness about what he needed to do to bring the best out of the team,” Fernandes told Sky Sports in May.

The same player would end up being a protagonist in his downfall.

Underwhelming window, pre-season worries

United’s return to the Champions League, secured with three games of last season to spare, was a triumph for Carrick. The former midfielder was made permanent head coach before finishing the campaign with a 3-0 win away to Brighton on the final day.

But the return to European competition also heightened the need to strengthen the squad in the summer. Carrick had the luxury of a light schedule last season but that was about the change with the addition of a minimum of eight extra games.

The club spent £163m in the window, less than newly-promoted Hull and Ipswich, and chose to invest it all in one area of the pitch only, prioritising the midfield with the signings of Youri Tielemans, Andrey Santos and Carlos Baleba. The latter arrived injured.

Three months on, the trio are yet to offer value for money. Meanwhile, the lack of investment in other areas has been punished.

They continue to look short of quality in defence, where player turnover has been minimal, while Benjamin Sesko’s injury issues have left them without a proper No 9 for most of the season.

Tielemans’ revelation that there hadn’t been a focus on fitness work during pre-season rang alarm bells in August and the side’s sluggish displays subsequently raised questions of their conditioning.

“The reality is they’re not running enough, they’re not showing enough tenacity, determination, fighting spirit. They’re just not,” said Neville after their 1-1 draw with 10-man Spurs, doubling down on similar comments made after the draw with Fulham.

Carrick argued otherwise but tracking data puts United among the Premier League’s bottom clubs for both distance covered and sprints this season. Their lack of intensity allowed a string of opponents to overpower them with ease.

Deteriorating form and mutinous players

Defeat to Hull on the opening day set the tone for the new campaign. A meagre total of seven points from their first seven games made it United’s worst start in 40 years.

Their only victory, a 5-2 win over Ipswich at Old Trafford, also stands out as the only Premier League game in which Fernandes had either scored or assisted before his penalty against Aston Villa on Sunday. His loss of form proved especially damaging for Carrick. Soon, it seemed tensions were spilling over.

Lisandro Martinez took aim at the club’s hierarchy and technical director Jason Wilcox in an extraordinary interview after their Champions League defeat to Atletico Madrid.

“We had a fantastic season last season, and now we expect more from the top, from upstairs, to bring in more players to compete because many teams have brought in many players as well.

“I expect more from our technical director. I have to be honest. And also, as a player, we have to do more. But it’s also important to build a strong squad to be ready for this kind of night.”

Martinez also appeared critical of Carrick. “He does his best,” he said. “But every season is different. You can’t stay with what you did last season. The teams know how you play, they know every detail. If you don’t change, next season is a big problem.”

Those comments were nothing, though, compared to those made by Fernandes after the loss to Como, when he questioned Carrick and his staff directly over their plan for United’s pressing.

“It’s a decision from the staff to not press man-to-man and sometimes leave a little space in behind and try to get the ball in the first moment, to wait for them, to give them the ball,” he said.

“But sometimes when you give the ball to these teams, they get confident, they have so many bodies behind the ball that make you run a lot, make people get frustrated, and when you recover the ball the legs and the brain are more difficult to make work.”

Carrick responded when the comments of his captain were put to him. “We half pressed man-to-man in the second half and ended up conceding a goal from that,” he said. “Whatever tactics you play, if you don’t run back, you ain’t going to win.”

Carrick later insisted there was no divide between the players and the coaching staff. Fernandes later described reports of their relationship becoming strained as “lies”. But from that moment on it seemed a question of when, not if, the head coach would depart.

Fernandes was recalled to the team after his omission from the 3-0 loss to Bournemouth and scored his first Premier League goal since August in the draw with Aston Villa. But the player who inspired their turnaround under Carrick last season could not do enough to save him. For Carrick, the writing was already on the wall.

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