Manchester United 2:1 Crystal Palace

Biggins · Mar 2, 2026

SubutaiScipio said:
Ole had similar if not better stats. We have to look past merely the results if we are going to make him permanent.

Don't get me wrong. The results are great and should be considered but they should not be the only thing considered. The performances and progression in system implementation have to be factored into the conversation.

What system implementation do you expect from any manager that comes in mid season and with a squad that got gutted to fit 3-5-2?

justsomebloke · Mar 2, 2026

SubutaiScipio said:
Ole had similar if not better stats. We have to look past merely the results if we are going to make him permanent.

Don't get me wrong. The results are great and should be considered but they should not be the only thing considered. The performances and progression in system implementation have to be factored into the conversation.

Permanent is one thing, but to argue this looks no better than before is obvious nonsense. You don't win 19 of 21 pts in the PL with inferior performances.

SubutaiScipio · Mar 2, 2026

justsomebloke said:
Permanent is one thing, but to argue this looks no better than before is obvious nonsense. You don't win 19 of 21 pts in the PL with inferior performances.

You are the one talking nonsense. The main question is not if this is better than before but if this is sustainable long-term.
When the decision is to be made over Carrick it won't be just about if he is better than Amorim but how his team will perform long-term.
Continuous average performances, even when winning games, is not a formula to go with. The first 3-4 games were good to great in terms of performances but the last 3 have not been so good.

SubutaiScipio · Mar 2, 2026

Biggins said:
What system implementation do you expect from any manager that comes in mid season and with a squad that got gutted to fit 3-5-2?

They are playing once a week and even had times where they went nearly 2 weeks without football. The team has enough players to play 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. I am not saying it is a perfect scenario but i expect the performances to be getting better not worse.

The performances in the first 3-4 games were really good but over the last 3 performances those levels have dropped. It is awesome that we are winning games but we need to factor all that into the equation when assessing Carrick.

We should ensure logic reigns supreme when making a long-term decision and not get carried away by emotion like in Ole's case.

justsomebloke · Mar 2, 2026

SubutaiScipio said:
You are the one talking nonsense. The main question is not if this is better than before but if this is sustainable long-term.
When the decision is to be made over Carrick it won't be just about if he is better than Amorim but how his team will perform long-term.
Continuous average performances, even when winning games, is not a formula to go with. The first 3-4 games were good to great in terms of performances but the last 3 have not been so good.

Okay. It's not good enough, so it won't last. Because.....it doesn't look good to you? And 6 wins out of 7 is just because......what, luck? Coincidence?

I'm not saying Michael Carrick is the second coming, or even that he should be hired permanently. But no one, including you, actually know how sustainable this record is going to turn out to be.

And it is blindingly obvious that no one gets a 6-1-0 record in the Premier League, including wins against the best two teams in the league, for any other reason than that your performances have, on the whole, been good. Declining lately yes, but again, no one knows if that is a trend that is going to continue, or if it will reverse. You can see problems, they might be solved or they might not.

In short, you're jumping to conclusions you are in no position to make, and not making a serious argument here.

SubutaiScipio · Mar 2, 2026

justsomebloke said:
Okay. It's not good enough, so it won't last. Because.....it doesn't look good to you? And 6 wins out of 7 is just because......what, luck? Coincidence?

I'm not saying Michael Carrick is the second coming, or even that he should be hired permanently. But no one, including you, actually know how sustainable this record is going to turn out to be.

And it is blindingly obvious that no one gets a 6-1-0 record in the Premier League, including wins against the best two teams in the league, for any other reason than that your performances have, on the whole, been good. Declining lately yes, but again, no one knows if that is a trend that is going to continue, or if it will reverse. You can see problems, they might be solved or they might not.

In short, you're jumping to conclusions you are in no position to make, and not making a serious argument here.

You are the one jumping into conclusions. I am responsible for what i write, you are responsible for how you understand or misunderstand it.

I never said Carrick should not be appointed long-term. All i said is that we have to look at other things like performances and progress in team chemistry AS WELL AS the result. The results have been great and are definitely a factor when making the final decision BUT the performances matter as well.

If we keep winning games and putting in performances like the first 3 games that is great but if we win the rest of our games but are putting in performances like these last 3 games, that is a cause for concern. No one knows how sustainable this will be but in the grand scheme of things, a winning record is likely more sustainable with great performances than with mediocre ones.

Bright_Eyes · Mar 2, 2026

justsomebloke said:
Okay. It's not good enough, so it won't last. Because.....it doesn't look good to you? And 6 wins out of 7 is just because......what, luck? Coincidence?

I'm not saying Michael Carrick is the second coming, or even that he should be hired permanently. But no one, including you, actually know how sustainable this record is going to turn out to be.

And it is blindingly obvious that no one gets a 6-1-0 record in the Premier League, including wins against the best two teams in the league, for any other reason than that your performances have, on the whole, been good. Declining lately yes, but again, no one knows if that is a trend that is going to continue, or if it will reverse. You can see problems, they might be solved or they might not.

In short, you're jumping to conclusions you are in no position to make, and not making a serious argument here.

There's some weird stuff going on in this thread. I haven't seen anybody say it's just down to luck that we're winning. All I've seen people say is that we should look at other things as well as results to try to predict what's best long term, as you should do when hiring a manager..

justsomebloke · Mar 3, 2026

SubutaiScipio said:
You are the one jumping into conclusions. I am responsible for what i write, you are responsible for how you understand or misunderstand it.

I never said Carrick should not be appointed long-term. All i said is that we have to look at other things like performances and progress in team chemistry AS WELL AS the result. The results have been great and are definitely a factor when making the final decision BUT the performances matter as well.

If we keep winning games and putting in performances like the first 3 games that is great but if we win the rest of our games but are putting in performances like these last 3 games, that is a cause for concern. No one knows how sustainable this will be but in the grand scheme of things, a winning record is likely more sustainable with great performances than with mediocre ones.

I guess the point here would be that there is a reasonable limit to how far you can separate "performance" and "result". There is in the real world no way to win ten straight Premier League games if the performance is not good. If we finish this season with 16 wins and a draw in our last 17 games, and you're not happy with the performance, then the problem is with what you're not able to see. Because that's the kind of result that defines what "good performance" means.

Apart from that, regarding the basis for Carrick's appointment we have the same opinion.

justsomebloke · Mar 3, 2026

Bright_Eyes said:
There's some weird stuff going on in this thread. I haven't seen anybody say it's just down to luck that we're winning. All I've seen people say is that we should look at other things as well as results to try to predict what's best long term, as you should do when hiring a manager..

He's saying a good deal more than that. I guess my point is that he's wildly exaggerating the extent to which you can separate results from performances. Apparently, results have been great, but performances "average", and hence not sustainable. Since he doesn't think the results come from good performance, what do they come from, if it's not luck either?

All I'm saying is maybe be a little more humble concerning your ability to judge the quality of a performance and how relevant that is, because 6 wins in 7 tells a pretty different story, and a more convincing one at that. And I say that as someone who hasn't been all that happy with many of the performances either.

lex talionis · Mar 3, 2026

There has been an emerging theme among the skeptics on this forum that because xG and xPTS tell the real story, that we're underperforming and have been lucky, or that luck has played a part in our run of 6 wins in 7 matches,

I'm not going to deny that luck plays a part in football. There was an element of luck in both our goals against Bayern in 99. John Terry slipping was good luck for us and bad luck for Chelsea in 08. Yet no one would argue that United were lucky to be CL winners in 99 and 08.

But I can't think of any indisputably lucky events during our 7 game run. Maybe the Romero sending off was lucky for us, but we had the game under control with or without Romero. Some here disputed the pen and red card on the Palace player, but both were the right call as the foul continued into the box and Cunha was denied a clear goal scoring opportunity. Perhaps the luck was that Romero and whoever the Palace player was committed bonehead mistakes, but that would stretch the meaning of luck too far.

What's closer to the truth is that Carrick has managed the squad brilliantly. He moved Bruno up, brought Mainoo on and went with two CBs instead of three. He's managed Sesko brilliantly, sometimes starting him and sometimes bringing him off the bench. The spirit of the players looks immensely brighter as well. We're taking intelligent risks with players like Yoro, who admittedly hasn't been brilliant but he needs competitive minutes for his development. The naysayers will argue that we haven't smashed clubs that we should have been smashing, but I would remind the naysayers that we were the ones getting smashed by clubs like City (perhaps to be expected) and Everton (a shocking shit-on-stick performance) and now we're dispatching such clubs.

Every upcoming opponent now looks beatable, which is something that could not have been said under Amorim. Under Amorim, every opponent was licking their lips at facing United. Sure, we picked up a few wins under Amorim but when we looked good, we looked terrible. Under Carrick, we look pretty good -- possibly the form side of any club on the planet at the moment? -- but we could look better. What we all want to see is us smashing clubs like Newcastle so that we can bring on youth players to close out games starting around the 70th minute. That's the United I want to see, but I'll take the United we have now.

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