If Carrick shouldn't be compared to Ole, then Iraola shouldn't be compared to Moyes and Frank.
Judge both of them only on their own merits.
Andoni Iraola
- Thread starter JB08
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Judge both of them only on their own merits.
In Iraolas defence, you have to take into account the player quality at his disposal. Of course he has big risks and I'm fine either way between Carrick and him, but Iraola has done a really good job relative to the quality he has to manage and the sales he has had to deal with.
Would be interesting to see a "Carrick or Iraola" poll.
Personally I'd opt for Iraola, but not by such a massive margin that I'd be overly bothered if the decision went the other way.
Personally I'd opt for Iraola, but not by such a massive margin that I'd be overly bothered if the decision went the other way.
I think so.
Maybe you could argue the last time was the Ole/Rangnick season. Maybe ETH and Amorim were so bad tactically that it wasn't even the players discontent causing the downfall.
But the point being, if the players don't like the 7 days a week at this club and the results aren't great in early stages like he experienced at Bournemouth, that's a recipe for a toxic meltdown season like we've seen many times in the last 13 years.
I mean, these players are loving life under Carrick who's giving them extra days off compared to their used to. Imagine the backlash when they experience the complete opposite.
He reminds me of a South Park character, so I don’t think I can take him seriously.
Indifferent should be an option too. They both bring different strengths and risks.
I'd have cautious optimism under both, which is a decent enough place to be.
Since the Man City game, we have won 2 games by more than one goal.
Carrick has done great to get us to the Champions League but just feels like he's running above expectation and it could quickly fall back.
Iraola is surely a upgrade on Carrick, but my worry is half of this squad hate working too hard !
Carrick has done great to get us to the Champions League but just feels like he's running above expectation and it could quickly fall back.
Iraola is surely a upgrade on Carrick, but my worry is half of this squad hate working too hard !
No but he understands the pressures of being at United better than Iraola or any of these other up and coming managers we could end up with. He seems to be handling it all pretty well so far...
Add to this the drop off teams have had around us. Can't hold it against Carrick but it's likely to be a bit of an anomaly of a season in that regard.
Annoying thing is they would probably work well together as a pair. Carrick knows the club inside out, the expectation management and demand. Iraola is infinitely better tactically and would take away from the concerns around Carrick.
If I had to go for one now, it would be Carrick but it's close.
You must hate the thought of Carrick long term then as he has no clue how to control possession. Like at all
We wouldn't train 7 days a week in this case is my bold guess
Iraola has proven he can adapt with losing players and still play high intensity football while developing players. Carrick has done amazing job so far, the big unknown is simply that with improved MF, will he be able to play high intensity football? Iraola has already proven it with smaller budget over the last 3 years. Utd have lost intensity since city game and has more counter attacking element of play. It’s a difficult decision for the club as no one Expected the results achieved by carrick.
I’m very indifferent on Carrick. Like Iraola I think he has his pluses but he’s far from a guarantee on anything. But on the quip; his Middlesbrough side actually averaged pretty high % on possession throughout his tenure (around 55%)
Not even trying to speak ill of Carrick, I like him, and was in one of these managerial threads defending him and the job he’s done, but I find Iraola’s track record, and play style(s), considerably more impressive than Carrick’s.
It’s a no for me.
I like him, and I think I'd prefer him to Carrick, but there's still huge question marks on whether he could make the step up.
It's the style of play for me as I just think I'd enjoy watching United under him more so than Carrick.
I can only really get behind safe play if it's under a top class manager like Simeone. If werl don't get a top manager at least go with someone that plays interesting football.
I think the caveat here is a lot of the low possession managers are such because they're playing a safe low-mid block that is happy to watch the opposition I pass the ball in front of them.
Bournemouth are pressing high to try attack quickly, he's certainly not Nuno or Hodgson.
Arguably you could say Iraola's high pressing but more direct attack style is a better bridge for this team than jumping straight to a high pressing possession based manager.
There's two concerns over this team changing styles, one is the players are not physically up to it and two is they're not technically up to it. Under Iraola we only have to adapt to the physical differences and not the technical which might be a more comfortable transition.
I keep saying I don't think an Enrique could even begin to work with this squad having such poor fundamentals when it comes to ball retention.
The main takeaway might be is good midtable managers don't do well in general when they get a big 6 job, there's only really Pochettino to Spurs as the success story. It's a slight concern but there must be good managers who haven't gotten their chance yet, if you take out the very defensive managers and focus on the attacking ones you could find some success.
If you were to ask random aspirational European sides to choose between Iraola & Carrick, they would mostly all opt for Iraola.
And while I don't discount factors like knowing the club, having experienced the pressure as a player and having had an interim stint in charge at this club, it's still ultimately hard for me to value that over probably being the better coach/manager more generally. Especially when I don't particularly have a preference for Carrick in terms the style of play we've seen from both managers either.
And while I don't discount factors like knowing the club, having experienced the pressure as a player and having had an interim stint in charge at this club, it's still ultimately hard for me to value that over probably being the better coach/manager more generally. Especially when I don't particularly have a preference for Carrick in terms the style of play we've seen from both managers either.
Exactly this. Carrick will be alright for top 4 but he isn’t a top tactician and will lose us a lot of games we should be winning. I’d gamble on Nagelsmann, Hoeness… these guys play aggressive attacking football.
I don't understand what would suddenly not make Carrick favourite for the job?
There is no opportunity for him to mess things up now really.
There is no opportunity for him to mess things up now really.
I still don’t get why people are mentioning Alonso as an elite manager. He’s had 1 really good season with Leverkusen. He’s proved nothing at Madrid and he’s not been in the prem yet. I’d much rather Fabregas than Alonso anyway… his style would suit us much more
Probably a leathering against Liverpool Sunday will make the owners change their mind. Or dull performances for the rest of the season.
The only thing would be the vision for the next steps and how he wants to play - give we're now told he doesn't want to play like this.
Kompany replacement.
Liverpool haven't got it in them, and tbf its been quite dull/worrying for a few games now.
4 defeats in the final 4 games would maybe do it?
It's Carrick's job now though realistically, even playing poorly we'll likely scrape a win or two as we have been doing, the club don't care about performances.
I think we're counting our chickens here.
There's a lot of people trying to extrapolate Ole's reign and assume that's how it will go for Carrick, both in a positive and negative sense. People assuming like Ole he won't have what it takes to bring back the glory days and deliver trophies, and people assuming he'll deliver us top 4 every year by default because Ole managed it a couple of times.
I don't think either are fair assumptions. He might surprise us in a positive sense, particularly if recruitment is better than the Ole era. Or next season the poor performances might catch up with us and results aren't as fortuitous, and two games a week takes it's toll, and we aren't even top 4.
It's really hard to predict.
Leftfield take but Carricks strength seems be on knowing what it takes to win over a season, he has Fergies blueprint - Whereas Iraola perhaps the Queiroz tactical vibes. Putting those two together would be interesting.
Let’s look at the stat you brought up: since Carrick’s arrival, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Forest have won 4 games by more than one goal. United is tied with City and Brighton at 3. I would say this is not as bad as you implied? Meanwhile, Iraola—the supposed master of progressive football—has only won one game by more than a single goal. Now, you could say that Bournemouth doesn't have the same quality of players as United, which is fair. But if "doing more with less" is the standard, why aren't we calling for Hürzeler instead? He also has a "lower-profile" squad at Brighton, yet he has a better league position and more multi-goal wins than Iraola.
Ultimately, the data tells us one of two things: either the entire league is so bad, or the league is so competitive right now that nobody is beating anyone easily.
Let's look at other stats. Since Carrick took over, United has earned the most points (potentially second if City win their game in hand) and scored 24 goals—tied with Arsenal at the 2nd place and only Liverpool has more with 25. I don’t understand the constant complaints. Do people sincerely believe we have a top-three squad? Before this run, nobody imagined we’d even be fighting for Champions League. If Iraola is working miracles, then so is Carrick.
You mentioned Carrick is "running above expectation and it could quickly fall back." Of course, these results feel unsustainable — but that’s not because of the coaching — it’s because we are, at best, a top-six squad currently playing at a top-two level. If we are “only” fighting for top 4 next season, would anyone say it’s a failure? The double standard here is also particularly strange: if Carrick is overachieving and bound to fall back, why is the same not said for Iraola? Why are people so certain Iraola can sustain his level at a bigger club? For the past few years, the narrative was that United was "too big" for managers like Ten Hag or Amorim. How can anyone be certain that Iraola is a "sure upgrade" when he has zero experience at this level of pressure?
We need to set a baseline: unless there is a miraculous summer window, the proper expectation for next season is to fight for a Champions League spot. If the head coach hits that target, they've done their job; if not, they move on. While that feels like a "downtrend" compared to our current results, we should agree that it's a realistic expectation for Carrick, or anyone else.
If we somehow land Enrique, I’m all for it. But I don't see a logical reason to favor Iraola over Carrick that much right now.
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I brought you all 2 trophies in 2 years, after your dry spell from 2017. Comparing me to Amorim is quite disrespectful.
ETH seemed to have half of a good plan, but then the other half was doing the complete opposite of what was needed.
Having as many players press so high as what he did wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But it has to be backed by a defence that sits quite high to compress the play into as small an area as possible, and he did the exact opposite and had us playing with one of the deepest defences in the league. That combination of an attack pushing high and our defence sitting deep is what created such a ridiculously large amount of space in the middle which is what caused the majority of our issues under him.
People try to defend that by saying our defence wasn't capable of doing anything else, but Ole had us playing higher (normally 5th or 6th highest in the league if I remember correctly) before him and Amorim came in and had the defence playing higher as well. Even in ETH's first season when he was otherwise playing very similarly to how we did under Ole he had our defence sitting much deeper. So it was either a deliberate tactic from ETH, something he completely overlooked and didn't focus on at all, or something he didn't want but was for some reason incapable of changing despite the managers both before and after showing it could be done.
It's a very lazy narrative that has rarely been true, but I do think Ole (and Rangnick the same season) was thrown under the bus by the players to some extent. The dressing room seemed completely broken at that point. None of Amorim, ETH, Mourinho or LVG were. They may have had a couple of players that were issues, but as a whole the playing group never stopped trying for them. Hell, the three players that probably had the biggest axe to grind with Mourinho (Pogba, Martial and Shaw) where his three best players the season that he was fired while it was the players that he loved the most (Lukaku and Matic) that were letting him down the most.
Interestingly, the only other manager that I think has any claim of the players letting him down was Moyes, and many of those players we all consider legends. They just quickly saw that he was completely out of his depth and lost all faith in him, coming directly after the greatest manager of all time.
If we were going for some established name, that has shown he take the pressure and bring the results in a big club - yeah, sure. But so far Carrick has not been worse than Iraola in the PL.
Kompany to City?! Thats not happening this summer, though. Iraola will go to Chelsea.
Why is Carrick just automatically assumed to be the favourite for the job? The bar was so low coming from Amorim that literally all anyone had to do was play our better players in their correct positions in a suitable formation and we would automatically look better and that is what happened. Why is that a basis to give him the permanent job on a long term deal?. It just reeks yet again of a lack of true ambition. Do we want to remain mediocre also rans or are we interested in competing for and winning big titles? We should be looking for the coach that can take us to the next level. Even if it fails, keep trying!! Can't just settle because the last 3 times we tried did not work out.
I don't think judging by winning multiple goals is fair to judge the manager, that can come down to finishing (on either side) which the manager can't control.
However the eye test is, how often have I finished watching the game under Carrick and thought "we played really well today, we were clearly the better team". Not very often at all. Now, you can argue we don't have the players to perform well, and having 50/50 tight games that go our way is the best we can hope for with these players. Maybe that's true.
But when two people watch the same thing with their eyes and come to different conclusions, you have to look at stats to see who they're in favour of.
Our xPTS since Carrick came in is 20, and our actual points is 29. Our xGD since Carrick came in is +2, and our actual GD is +10. So the people who felt from the eye test that we might be getting a bit of positive variance in this run of games, might have a point.
Bournemouth xPTS in the same timeframe is 20, and their actual is 23. Their xGD is +3.2, and their actual is +6.
The underlying stats suggest in terms of chances created, balancing for and against, we're performing about the same level as Bournemouth. What this means I'm not sure, it depends on how highly you rate the quality of squad Carrick is working with vs Iraola is working with.
But Iraola advocates would argue having a defined high pressing style makes him an attractive option, and the quality of player he's working with isn't as high as they keep selling him best players every summer.
Ultimately, Carrick is the safer choice as the players like him and bringing in a new guy could rub the players up the wrong way, he's already got a grasp of what the players are like, the strengths and weaknesses etc. so he has a headstart on any external appointment that could come in.
Carrick’s Middlesbrough were relatively high possession, and played pretty good attacking football. I don’t think we can really judge him at United until he gets his own players, whether that would ever happen is another matter. His problem at Middlesbrough was no Plan B, and they were often quite open at the back, which we see now. Teams could sit in and frustrate them, which we also see now, and to be fair that’s a problem for most teams in world football.
Iraola, for me anyway, has displayed constant progress and he hasn’t downed tools or stagnated at Bournemouth, think it’s fair to expect he would continue progressing, he’s not wedded to a style that is going out of date. It would also be interesting to see what he does with more resources, don’t think Bournemouth have had any duds in the transfer market?
Iraola, for me anyway, has displayed constant progress and he hasn’t downed tools or stagnated at Bournemouth, think it’s fair to expect he would continue progressing, he’s not wedded to a style that is going out of date. It would also be interesting to see what he does with more resources, don’t think Bournemouth have had any duds in the transfer market?
No, he will likely stay for next season but I want us to be more proactive as a club.
I agree. I was talking about that (winning multiple goals) only because the person I replied to brought it up and used it against Carrick.
If we’re going to pivot to xG based stats, we have to acknowledge their limitations. These models vary significantly depending on which data provider you use, and over a small sample, they are prone to massive noise and aren't statistically significant. If 13 games' xPTS / xG / xGD is a good indicator, Chelsea should have kept Rosenior.
Speaking about eye test, every one of us watches 90 minutes of every United game under a microscope. Realistically, how many people here have actually sat through 13 full Bournemouth matches this season? How many people here are just parroting the "progressive football" narrative they see online? The "eye test" argument usually favors the manager you watch less often. We see every "ugly" win Carrick grinds out, but most people only see Bournemouth’s best moments.
Again, I’m not downplaying Iraola’s work. My point remains: if Iraola is praised for overachieving with his squad, Carrick should be given the same grace. It feels like people are looking for reasons to doubt Carrick while looking for reasons to believe in Iraola. I don't like double standard.
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