The season has not started yet. I still think we need signings, it has been obvious and is still obvious. That is not having a go at the manager. Get a good win next week and go from there.
Michael Carrick | 2025/26 Manager Performances
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Not fitness, maybe sharpness. It’s obviously a balancing act between training, rest and recovery sessions, and match day load is a factor too. But in terms of fitness we improved massively under Amorim vs those who came before him. A lot of people mentioned this, even if the results of tactics weren’t to their liking.
Think of it this way too though, how often do we look shite after international breaks? Second part of last season we often had one game every two or three weeks at times. In my own experience I am better when I play or train regularly, so my personal belief would be that it’s good to train regularly. It doesn’t have to be intense all the time either.
There was an added pressure from Amorim to try to nail down the tactical side too, which I’m sure was a big part of his increased sessions.
We didn't look less fit either. We just had a more compact defensive structure which left us less open at the back. Because as much as we pressed under Amorim, once that press was bypassed our CM and back three looked consistently vulnerable to transitions.
Nonetheless, concluding that our training is soft when the reports are actually that its shorter and more intense just seems like an attempt to throw barbs without any sound basis. We didn't look fit today, but a lot of our starting players have only just come back into the team - being played to regain match fitness - so it's entirely unsurprising. Blaming Carrick's training methods rather than the fact that it's pre-season feels agenda driven.
This is the dumbest theory in the world. You know which teams make more money? It's the ones who qualify for the CL every single year. It's the ones who win the big trophies. It's a moronic conclusion from some tenuous correlation.
Not qualifying loses us sponsorship revenue, broadcasting revenue, and massive prize money. The business performs significantly better by being in the CL. Cutting back on transfers doesn't make financial sense because it costs them more elsewhere.
Coming to some decisions that I am unsure about from Carrick.
-I am unsure why we spent 60 million on Yoro and now he is buried on the depth chart for CB. He makes mistakes but to become a progressive team we need a young CB with recovery pace rather than having Maguire play
- I am surprised that he hasn't pushed harder for a new Lb. For me personally a LB was an even bigger priority than midfielder. People rate Luke Shaw but I personally find him very limited and again difficult to play good football with him
- I am not sure about the positioning of our fullbacks in general, Mazaroui for some reason seemed to be playing as an attacker which is a waste of time
- Mbeumo should have started this game. He seemed our best attacker and if Sesko is missing then we needed to see him at 9. Cunha & Amad can't play that role
-I am unsure why we spent 60 million on Yoro and now he is buried on the depth chart for CB. He makes mistakes but to become a progressive team we need a young CB with recovery pace rather than having Maguire play
- I am surprised that he hasn't pushed harder for a new Lb. For me personally a LB was an even bigger priority than midfielder. People rate Luke Shaw but I personally find him very limited and again difficult to play good football with him
- I am not sure about the positioning of our fullbacks in general, Mazaroui for some reason seemed to be playing as an attacker which is a waste of time
- Mbeumo should have started this game. He seemed our best attacker and if Sesko is missing then we needed to see him at 9. Cunha & Amad can't play that role
If Ineos have anything about them they will corner Amorim in the car park and beg him to come back.
Aye
Quality control
This was his chance to prove he was better than the man he was brought in to replace and failed, which ever way you look at it the result was an embarrasment
I admire your eagerness to jump in and join the ranks of commenters who are unable to follow the conversation....
Yes, Delap's stats from when he was playing for fecking Ipswich is meaningless because literally nobody gives a flying feck. He completely flopped last year, as soon as he joined a club that can actually stay in PL for more than a season. That was clearly the point of the jab. So tell me again why you cannot help the urge to be argumentative?
Zirkzee is miles better player than Delap and if he stops pointless pursuit of making it at United and actually joins a team that suits him, he will have way better career than Delap ever will. Delap is championship level, Zirkzee is easily able to be a Serie A star. That was the point, that is the point. Feel free to disagree if you want, but don't bring some old numbers when we are talking about present and whether Zirkzee should be valued higher than Delap, in 2026, or not.
I can't work out who is serious and who is on the wind up
Other than finishing 3rd while beating City, Arsenal and Liverpool and winning more points than any other coach from his appointment to the end of the season. All while reintegrating a key youth product and overseeing really good dressing room vibes.
Other than that, though.
He's already done that by finishing where he finished last season with the same team. I'll concede today was a bad look for everyone involved but that doesn't negate last season, after all it's preseason the aim is to get match sharpness results are secondary.
Scoring goals for Ipswich is more impressive than Zirkzee not scoring any at Utd.
Mbeumo has had plenty of pre-season minutes. He's ready. Cunha needed the game time. I would highly doubt any of Mainoo, Martinez, Cunha or Rashford start next week because they've barely trained.
Amad, Mbeumo and Dorgu start next week. Santos and Tielemans in central midfield.
Amorim generally did well against bigger sides when he was with us and this is just more of the same. He had us fearing relegation for gods sake
Yeah agreed. I don't think that it's a big deal. He clearly wanted to focus on minutes for his main guys.
But Mbeumo played most of the match a couple days ago and Cunha needed minutes. Pre-season games are about getting the whole squad ready for the season, not playing the best team so you win. Mbeumo will start up top for our first league games.
I reckon the 17 Premier League games he managed last season did that for him rather than a pre season game.
I don’t think there are many conclusions we can draw from a friendly, especially when some of our key players are just coming back to match fitness.
However, a few issues that seem glaring and I had hoped we solve in the transfer market:
- In CB, we have a lot of numbers with reliability issues. Our senior defenders, Maguire, Licha and MdL are unlikely to be available through the season. The youngsters in Yoro and Heaven are promising but not there yet. Ideally, we would have sold one of the senior ones and a got a very good cb in
- Our LB is a glaring weakness. Not much to elaborate here.
- Our CM partnerships are untested and potentially lacks a good DM. I shudder to see Tielmans and Mainoo starting together against a fast attacking team
- A back-up striker was desperately needed to take the load off Sesko. Mbeumo, Cunha dont cut it.
With so many games to play, we will enter into a situation when one of these positions become an Achilles heel for us. I think we will be in the scrap for top 5 with a risk of finishing lower if we get a long term injury in any of the key positions.
However, a few issues that seem glaring and I had hoped we solve in the transfer market:
- In CB, we have a lot of numbers with reliability issues. Our senior defenders, Maguire, Licha and MdL are unlikely to be available through the season. The youngsters in Yoro and Heaven are promising but not there yet. Ideally, we would have sold one of the senior ones and a got a very good cb in
- Our LB is a glaring weakness. Not much to elaborate here.
- Our CM partnerships are untested and potentially lacks a good DM. I shudder to see Tielmans and Mainoo starting together against a fast attacking team
- A back-up striker was desperately needed to take the load off Sesko. Mbeumo, Cunha dont cut it.
With so many games to play, we will enter into a situation when one of these positions become an Achilles heel for us. I think we will be in the scrap for top 5 with a risk of finishing lower if we get a long term injury in any of the key positions.
Our press definitely improved towards in his last months here. Oct - November last year we could genuinely press man to man and cause teams issues. The system as a whole wasn't great but i definitely saw our pressing patterns improve. When it went wrong we were really disjointed (see the 3-0 loss to City) but it was definitely improving. In Amorim's last few months we had the 4th highest pressing height in the PL behind Arsenal, Man City and Brighton.
As I’ve mentioned in my other posts, there’s a lot of grey area with this stuff and we’re in no position to comment. There’s also additional reasons why Amorim may have wanted his players in more regularly for tactical reasons. It’s all just guess work at this point.
The only other evidence is their previous stints at other clubs. I definitely can’t be bothered to look at running stats of Middlesbrough or Sporting, but based on their on pitch performances, Sporting were a very intense and dogged side. So Amorims methods in terms of fitness have been proven to work at a high level. I guess we’ll find out with Carrick once his routines have their desired effect over time.
Delap flopped with Chelsea and Zirkzee has flopped with us. Agreed that Zirkzee will do much better in a slower league like Serie A, but Delap will do better running the channels for a lower table PL team who have less of the ball. To this day, Delap has scored more PL goals than Zirkzee, although the latter is slightly more useful playing deeper in the build up. Given that PL teams tend to have more money than Serie A teams, I can see Delap going for more money than Zirkzee.
It does feel somewhat like you were criticising Carrick though whilst praising Amorims sessions despite the fact the latter had us in a terrible mess whilst the former bailed us out.
In relation to that game vs Brighton, we did wipe the floor with them for the first time, having generally struggled before then.
We had more points and goals than any other PL team since Carrick got the job.
Yup and that still wasn’t enough to convince me that he is the man who is going to lead this club back to where we all think it should be.
The straws are being clutched
Unpopular opinion but I feel we are going to struggle this season, just like last season when Amorim was here. I don’t think we played as well as the points tally suggested last season and we could have easily lost more than we did.
I’m not seeing anything in pre season that makes me think we will be a more formidable side.
The same errors we talk about for every recent manager is the same.
Today was a real red flag and I don’t care it was pre season - it was our last game and at full strength almost.
Whether Carrick can get more out of this squad, I’m not sure. I’m more certain that he will be sacked before the seasons out, which isn’t really a reflection on him, he’s just the next fall guy.
I’m not seeing anything in pre season that makes me think we will be a more formidable side.
The same errors we talk about for every recent manager is the same.
Today was a real red flag and I don’t care it was pre season - it was our last game and at full strength almost.
Whether Carrick can get more out of this squad, I’m not sure. I’m more certain that he will be sacked before the seasons out, which isn’t really a reflection on him, he’s just the next fall guy.
I'm the furthest thing from an Amorim fan and my post was specifically in response to that user's claim. Our press did improve under him. I've never been pro Amorim and have actually gotten a lot of weird comments on here for being one of the few users defending Rashford from what i thought was very harsh treatment from Amorim at the time. That was a very strange period, never had i seen a manager so quickly labeled as a savior, it was almost impossible to criticize him on redcafe back then.
Correct - that was my point. The original poster I was responding to claimed Carrick is "soft as feck with training". I responded by saying the reports were actually that sessions were shorter but more intense, and that "I don't think any of us have a meaningful handle on this." So if you agree with that I'm not sure why you felt the need to jump in?
And Amorim's methods haven't been proven to work at a high level, unless you count the Portuguese league as a high level. When he was tested at a truly high level - the PL - he failed and was sacked.
Agreed. Sacking him wasn’t satisfying enough. We should talk him into coming back so we can fire him out of a giant clown cannon into a pool of hungry sharks.
Why were we so appalling under Amorim then and much better under Carrick?
Even though he wasn't my choice to be next manager, I like Carrick and the recovery last year to 3rd has at least given me something to hold on to unlike Amorim So i'm at least willing to give him time. But now that he's permanent manager, he needs to take the next step and that involves making tough decisions on team selection.
Maybe my dislike of Amorim completely wiped anything good he did from my mind, but did we even look fitter under him? Yeah we pressed more, but didn't we regularly run out of steam after an hour and basically crumbled?
Because Amorim was playing players out of position to implement his preferred system/ obsession, and Carrick has platformed them far far better by mostly playing them in preferred areas of the pitch.
I'm talking about fitness levels and general improvement and development, since we have far less directed training now
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Yeah I'd say that's a fairly accurate assessment. Although whether that was due to his innate conservatism, a losing mentality, terrible tactics, or fitness, it's hard to say.
But again, the sessions are reportedly shorter but more intense. How is that "soft as feck"?
I don't know what Carrick's supposed to do, he just hasn't been given the tools to compete properly.
We don't even currently have a striker available for him.
We don't even currently have a striker available for him.
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