Carrick next to Scholes in 2006-7 and 2007-8 was great, a really tremendous 2 man midfield, the best I've seen in my short 6 seasons following United.
In 2008-9 and through 2009-10, Scholes started dropping deeper, and we started playing more 3 man midfields with Scholes, Fletcher and Carrick. I was very interested to see who would go forward more.
At first it was Carrick, and he scored a few good goals, actually, and it maybe looked like it word work, but he never really kicked on from there.
And much worse for his game, he wasn't able to use his ability to make interceptions as efficiently, he wasn't in the spaces he normally occupied so effectively to cut off attacks. without being that strong at pursuit he wasn't as defensively effective.
The balance started going towards Fletcher till he was actually getting forward more than Carrick and it was better, but Carrick still wasn't as effective as he was in a 2 man midfield with Scholes. Fletcher went ahead of Carrick when we had a 2 man midfield as well, his form wasn't great at times.
2010-11, when he got to have a 2 man midfield with Giggs his strengths started showing again, but as that chart illustrates he's been sitting even deeper than he did with Scholes, allowing Giggs to go get forward and make do his snakehips thing. That makes sense to me, as Scholes liked to sit deeper and spread the ball, and Giggs likes to run with it, so I think his game is pretty much the same now a with Scholes, form permitting.