Michael Carrick's Manchester United Struggles Continue
Michael Carrick walked off at Old Trafford insisting he is going nowhere. The league table, and the mood around Manchester United, say something very different.
His team had just clawed back a 4-4 draw with Aston Villa, scoring twice in stoppage time to salvage a point that felt wild, chaotic and, in the cold light of day, deeply troubling. Eight Premier League games without a win. Eighteenth in the table. One point off safety. This is United’s lowest position after 10 top-flight matches since 1986/87, when they sat 20th.
The comeback was dramatic. The context is damning.
Carrick digs in as questions sharpen
On Sky Sports, Patrick Davison pressed Carrick on what comes next. The exchange turned prickly, a manager under siege batting away the suggestion that change might be coming.
“What do you expect to happen over the next few weeks?” Davison asked. “If you thought walking away was the best thing, you'd probably do it.”
“It’s not going to happen, no,” Carrick replied.
Davison tried again. “What do you expect to happen? Clearly there's going to be conversation?”
“Is there?” came the response.
“You would assume so, right?”
“Would you?”
The back-and-forth went on, tense and circular, Carrick refusing to open the door even an inch to the idea his position is in danger.
“We understand the situation; we haven't won enough games,” he eventually said. “But I expect to move forward and keep working on things we've been working on, showing a lot of the good in the game today, tighten up on a few mistakes and win football matches.”
The message was the same in his press conference. Carrick insisted the season is still salvageable.
“One hundred per cent,” he said. “I think there's more than enough. Goals change games and we've got to deal with it and it's something we have to improve on drastically. But there's more than enough, we're just making it too difficult for ourselves at the moment in certain times.
“I'm quite clear with what direction the club needs to go in. We've just got to win games.
“Football is about moments, football is about what happens in both boxes in the end. Take away the moments and the totally avoidable goals we've given away, I actually thought we played pretty well, we were the better team for the most part and I'm disappointed we haven't won the game.”
The belief is still there. The numbers are starting to drown it out.
Neville turns the spotlight upstairs
While Carrick fought his corner, Gary Neville pointed his finger higher up the club’s food chain.
“You can keep changing the manager and thinking that's going to be the answer,” he said on NBC. “But this has been proven now over eight managers in 12 years – that's not the answer.
“Michael could leave, Michael might stay, we don't know. The ownership don't have a clue what to do.
“It's rinse and repeat. (Ruben) Amorim, (Erik) Ten Hag, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Carrick, Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal, David Moyes, Ralf Rangnick – some of them are world-class managers who have had success; there are a lot of promising young managers there, ex-players who know the club as well.
“None of it has worked because if you recruit badly, if you've got a poor performance department, a poor recruitment department, you've not got leadership that is strong right through the spine of the football club, you will fail.
“Every organisation in the world will fail if you've not got an aligned leadership from top to bottom – your board and your ownership right the way through to the person who is stood on the pitch trying to play football.
“There are real issues within that football club; you've got people doing those jobs who have never done those jobs before in senior positions.”
The late goals against Villa may have eased the noise around Carrick for a night. They did nothing to quiet the long-running argument about what, or who, is really broken at United.
Keane questions character and dressing-room honesty
Roy Keane, as ever, went straight for the jugular. For him, the issue is not just structure. It is standards.
“It's obviously difficult for the manager. Under pressure, no doubt,” he said on Sky Sports. “He talks a lot but doesn't say much. I don't know if that's a tactic. Like a politician.
“He keeps saying we need to tighten up and there's things we need to work on, but they better get moving on that.
“It's the worst start in how many years; all these stats aren't very good. If you keep giving up goals and chances, it's just going to continue.
“What are we expecting to change over the next few weeks and months? What are they working on? They need to do a lot better than that.”
Keane even questioned Carrick’s calm demeanour.
“I admire people who are maybe casual. I wish I was casual like that! I see Carrick, and he's like, 'We just have to tighten up'. I'm going, 'Tighten up? You should be banging heads!'
“We're all different, but put it this way, they're going to Liverpool in a few weeks. How many chances are Liverpool going to get? I don't think this is a top Liverpool team, but do you believe United are going to roll their sleeves up and get a clean sheet? Dig in deep? Be hard to beat? Start quick? Well, good luck with that one.
“I don't see that as an honest dressing room. The really top players put demands on each other. They all seem to be tiptoeing around each other.
“They are certainly lacking leaders in the dressing room.”
So the picture is stark. A manager insisting he will stay and that there is “more than enough” in the squad. A club legend arguing the real fault line runs through the boardroom. Another accusing the current group of lacking honesty and leadership.
United now head into the November international break stuck in the relegation zone, on the worst Premier League winless run in their history, with Liverpool looming on the horizon.
Carrick says he “expects to move forward.” The question is whether the club, from dressing room to directors’ box, is willing – or able – to go with him.
