I dont follow them.
Michael Carrick - set to be recommended for permanent role
- Thread starter Bastian
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I wouldn't even see it that way. Our team is not strong enough to win the title. Assuming that is what we aspire, we should improve our squad with new good players. Regardless of who is the manager, and ideally players that should be good enough for any manager.
I think we did that to some degree in the summer with Lammens, Cunha, Mbeumo and Sesko, but we need more (and ideally even better).
I remember a (fair) point his doubters pedalled when he had that great start to this tenure: "Everything's great now for him now it's all going swimmingly. Let's see how he reacts to a wobble in results". I think he has proved he can handle that now too.
We had that run of 4 or 5 games where we were scraping by and dropped points to Newcastle, Leeds and Bournemouth, but has since put together 3 convincing wins on the bounce including away at Stamford Bridge and Liverpool at home (always tough fixtures for us), anf given us some good momentum in the run-in.
The next real challenge for him will be to see how he handles fixture congestion and squad rotation with some injuries to key players, which we will get to see at the start of next season.
Actually really quite excited to see what kind of signings we make for him with CL football now
We had that run of 4 or 5 games where we were scraping by and dropped points to Newcastle, Leeds and Bournemouth, but has since put together 3 convincing wins on the bounce including away at Stamford Bridge and Liverpool at home (always tough fixtures for us), anf given us some good momentum in the run-in.
The next real challenge for him will be to see how he handles fixture congestion and squad rotation with some injuries to key players, which we will get to see at the start of next season.
Actually really quite excited to see what kind of signings we make for him with CL football now
INEOS had made it obvious that they won't overpay on players. That means that we need to focus on our ability to sell United's project for the future. The head coach is pretty much center to that project. It's pretty evident that Carrick is going to get the job at this point. Political wise it would be suicide not to. Thus I can't understand why on earth we're postponing this
I followed Ole's management closer then the other managers for 2 reasons.
A- Because I could. Most friends I have who are close to the club had huge connections to it thanks to SAF. Those connections were reinvigorated the moment Ole became permanent manager.
B- Ole is a nice guy. He's the Mr Flanders of football, someone even Roy Keane likes. I don't think Keane likes anyone outside of his immediate family
Unfortunately I was 100 percent sure he'd fail. First of all the SAF's job was too big for anyone. Towards the end of his career SAF was in every room at the same time. He was involved in recruitment, in contract negotiations, in training, in scouting, in PR, in organizing/managing the summer tour etc. He could do it because A- He was a genius. B- He became untouchable at that point C-the job grew at equal pace to him. The tougher it got, the more experienced SAF became so it sort of evened it out. I dare to say that even a young SAF would have struggled replacing old SAF.
Ole had his strengths. First of all it's easy to love him and impossible to hate him. That's an underrated skill to have in an industry where you're dealing with people whose ego tend to be as big as the Trafford center. Secondly Ole had an eye for talent. He discovered Haaland and Bellingham. He also pushed hard for Bruno Fernandez. Unfortunately that by itself wasn't enough for the job. Ole wasn't assertive enough with the board who often ignored him. He wasn't great tactical wise. He struggled to say no which meant that we ended up with a bloated side filled with disillusioned players who were promised game time only to find themselves constantly on the bench. The guy proved how naive he is when interviewing for the job second time round. Ole was favorite for the job but that changed quickly when he demanded a clause which would allowed him to automatically take the job if he got CL qualification. Such demand contributed to scare the board off who was still traumatized after having to deal with Amorim's public meltdown on TV. It was really a silly demand considering that anyone who managed to qualify to the CL after such bad start would probably get the permanent job either way.
Appointing Carrick permanently has clearly been contingent on getting CL qualification and they got that just a couple of days ago. I don't see how you can already talk about 'postponing this'. If they wait until well after the season is over then yes.
Given how many people are against Carrick as permanent head coach because he'd be Ole 2.0, that clause would have been very necessary.
For clarity, what do you mean by "this"?
Because I think a lot of what we've seen is in line with what he did at Boro, but perhaps not in the sense you mean/think.
Indeed. Especially if they can rebuild the midfield and strengthen at left back. Like they did with the ttack and goalie this season. That would bode well
Consistently coach a side to Play the kinda of football Bayern believed could translate to a higher level.
No. You can dig up my old posts on Amorim but I said when he was hired that his first job is to improve the players we already have at the club and to improve on the 8th place finish prior to his arrival but we ended up finishing 15th with barely any improvement. And because of that I was also on the fence about giving him a new season. I wanted to judge him on how comfortable we are while winning games. But we barely won under him which was altogether new levels of being bad.
Ofcourse getting results is a vast improvement on what we endured under Amorim. That is not the point though. Carrick has done his job as an interim. A very good job. I'm just not sure we will continue to pick up results playing this way once he's made permanent. Anyways, its all moot though. At this point I'm convinced he's getting the job(as there are really no links with other candidates) so we will know next season if we can improve upon our performances.
His first two seasons with Boro they had one of if not the best attack in the Championship until their best players were sold. They were struggling to score goals until he took over and right away they scored 60 goals in his first 26 matches in charge. If his defense wasn’t shite he may have promoted them. Somehow people think what they’re seeing right now is “the same problems” he had at Boro
Mostly just reddit. Tactically inflexible, refuses to change. Uses an aggressive fullback and the other will be conservative(which tracks as Dalot is the aggressive one for us while Shaw is conservative).
Don't commit the common mistake folks do of conflating results with performance and domination with possession. Consistent performance means you produce the same match control for 90 minutes on and off the ball. In and out of possession. In and out of mommentum and tactical shifts during a game. All our best performances under Carrick had that at first. Since the Newcastle loss however we have either got that for a half (eg Liverpool, Aston Villa) or in some games not at all (eg Brentford, Leeds) even though we largely still got the results. Especially with increased space between matches leading to alarming drop offs. (Leeds). So folks having concerns are not plucking it out of thin air.
However, there STILL are fair caveats to it happening. Namely a) it's not Carrick's squad and b) the squad us punching above it's true weight. For it's not that deep for the switch to back 4 ball and has been missing key personnel in that period. (The best cbs, and the left side of the attack in Martinez (deep) and Dorgu (wide).
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He was a lot more possession based than what we are showing and he would pack out the midfield.
The tactical inflexibility and a more boring approach to the game is actually opposite to what he's showing here.
The mirsearable will be miserable unless we win the league immediately though.
Personally I want the board for once to truly pick and support a manager for 3-5 seasons. Like Arsenal did with Arteta. Whilst recruiting well players and support staff alike
There's an interesting question in there.
If Ole had got the interim job this time round instead of Carrick and delivered a similar new manager bounce, would the fans want him to get the permanent job at the same rate they do with Carrick? And would the board be as likely to appoint him permanently as they are Carrick, given he's already had his chance and ultimately couldn't deliver.
Also, did Ole's "eye for talent" land us Magure and Wan Bissaka for £130m?
Agree with the point, but Arsenal beat Leeds 5-0 early on and recently Forest beat Sunderland 5-0. There's probably been a record low of even 4 goal margin wins this season compared to usual though. Hard to really run away and batter a team in this league.
A board can't just blindly support any manager who's losing games every other week, with dire performances on top of it. Arteta was never that and it's just not realistic at all. United's managers post-SAF were rightly sacked because there's a point where it simply becomes untenable. If anything we've given managers far too much time to turn it around when obviously it isn't working.
Big test for them now, if they play their cards well they could get things right back on track. They are supposed to have a long term plan, and a vision for the football they want to see. Let's see it...
On my grounds, they probably looked at the actual peformances and not the results and that with new players his football will translate into better results. Also probably how Kompany got the Bayern job. They probably didn't focus on his team getting relegated but actually on how he had his team perform. The negative conclusions about Carrick also come from taking his time at Boro into account. Whereas Arsenal was Arteta's first job as the manager. Plenty of Boro fans said that Carrick was inflexible and very one dimensional during his stint.
I've given you my opinion on which performances I think were not good. I've also tried to be fair in which performances were good. That's not having a narrative.
Regarding the bolded part, that's not true. Otherwise I would have not classed our performance against City as good. They had like 68% possession that game. You probably would have known if you actually went through them. Having more possession is just one part. Limiting opposition attacks, actually having sustained attacks ourselves also matter.
Well, he might have learned a bit seeing how he changed to a back 3 against Brentford in the 2nd half.
And failed to do so in the Premier League. His burnley team showed nothing in the PL and got immediately relegated.
Which doesn’t mean anything to me because managing a big club and small club are not even the same profession.
Carrick is the current managing and is having results.
There are absolutely no assurances that hipster manager of the year would be able to manage United.
I think the reality is with football management all managers are set to fail. Its a rare thing to have managers at the very top last a long time. Since Fergie every manager we have had has failed, the probability of Carrick also failing is quite high. It wouldnt matter who we brought in the probability stays high.
The more I've seen the more I'm leaning towards he's earned the job, came in mid season and got a low morale squad firing again, some key players including Mainoo playing great again, has a great record and I know some of you are rightly questioning performances during this spell but also look at the squad he's inherited, performances weren't great at all for the last 18 months, I dont know how we can use that against Carrick.
Give him a pre-season and an eye until Christmas then assess from there, the manager won't be dictating the summer signings so its more a test of Ineos getting it right for the manager and club than the manager getting so much sway like we seen with Ten Hag and with a lesser extent with Amorim
Give him a pre-season and an eye until Christmas then assess from there, the manager won't be dictating the summer signings so its more a test of Ineos getting it right for the manager and club than the manager getting so much sway like we seen with Ten Hag and with a lesser extent with Amorim
City and Arsenal are 1st and 4th for average possession, 1st and 2nd for goals scored, 2nd and 1st for goals conceded, 2nd and 1st for xG, 2nd and 1st for xGA, etc.
Teams might not be as dominant as they were 20 years ago, but City and Arsenal are still on the whole more dominant than anyone else in the league this season. Because while the scale might be such that it isn't as clear across the entirety of individual games, it shows across bigger sample sizes. They're at the top of the table for a reason.
When I think about us needing to dominate games better, it doesn't mean every single game has to be perfect, or we have to smash teams in a manner akin to SAF sides from two decades agos. It just means I want to see us play in a way whereby, across enough games, we come out as one of the best teams in the league in terms of all of possession, goal threat and limiting the opposition goal threat.
And in the majority of our games under Carrick we’ve looked more likely to score than concede in my opinion, which is far from “terrible”.
We clearly had the better of the Liverpool game yet you even tried obfuscating on that one. I don’t think any Liverpool fan came away from that game thinking they had the better of it, and same goes for the opposition in most of our other games under Carrick. The obvious exceptions everyone agrees on (Leeds, Newcastle etc).
Do you honestly believe that is a fair barometer by which to judge Carrick’s interim stint?
Arteta and Pep have had years plus €1 billion spent for Arteta and €2 billion spent for Pep, both under more established and longer standing transfer structures. Six months ago there was plenty of talk here that we didn’t even have the squad for European football, and yet we’ve absolutely cruised into CL qualification with three games left.
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Possession is not dominance. Arsenal mostly keep possession as a defensive tactic and not to control games. Passing around the back with the 2 CBs and Rice is hardly considered domination if you struggle to create chances from open play.
We have been very entertaining recently, play great football, but unfortunately only in the first 20 mins or until we score
I don't want Carrick. But the biggest problem if this is true is that the ones in charge can't even follow a plan for a few months. It was interim until the ened of the season, then do a thorough look at all the available managers, and then make a decision.
If we look at Ole's signings. We can use it as a template for Carrick going forward. Basically out of all signings only Bruno was a success. Maguire was alright and Amad wasnt a first teamer at the time (dont know why). Pelestri, Ighalo and Teles were meant to be squad fillers or cheap punts and did exactly that. Twang thud was also okay because he was brought in from a free transfer for the experience, if Ronaldo didnt come he wouldve been more useful so not completely his fault.
Outside of those however we have others who costed loadsamoney in relation to what you get and didnt meet expectation. They have these traits:
- Too one dimensional (AWB, Dan James)
- A gamble that we overpaid for but unlike Bruno, was never the best in class to begin with (DVB). Struggled to even get a gametime
- Questionable characters. Simpsons tattoo, silly IG posts, you love to see it dramas (Sancho). Egoistic botoxbollox who only came here for the attention, money, and to increase his goalscoring tally (Ronaldo)
- Best in class but injury prone (Varane). Cant meet expectations if you spend most of your time being injured
We need to avoid exactly those type of players to ensure Ole disaster wont happen anymore. So that means we have to go after players that are:
- Not one dimensional. If theyre good at one thing and one thing only theyre gonna get found out very quickly in PL
- Best in class talents at the time. Rather than saving money to buy two, buy one but make sure theyre the best available at the time
- Normal human beings without a questionable character. Look at the records in previous club. Any recurring conflict? drama? has a mindset of a 15 y.o? if so, avoid
- Avoid anyone who is injury prone no matter how good they are
Outside of those however we have others who costed loadsamoney in relation to what you get and didnt meet expectation. They have these traits:
- Too one dimensional (AWB, Dan James)
- A gamble that we overpaid for but unlike Bruno, was never the best in class to begin with (DVB). Struggled to even get a gametime
- Questionable characters. Simpsons tattoo, silly IG posts, you love to see it dramas (Sancho). Egoistic botoxbollox who only came here for the attention, money, and to increase his goalscoring tally (Ronaldo)
- Best in class but injury prone (Varane). Cant meet expectations if you spend most of your time being injured
We need to avoid exactly those type of players to ensure Ole disaster wont happen anymore. So that means we have to go after players that are:
- Not one dimensional. If theyre good at one thing and one thing only theyre gonna get found out very quickly in PL
- Best in class talents at the time. Rather than saving money to buy two, buy one but make sure theyre the best available at the time
- Normal human beings without a questionable character. Look at the records in previous club. Any recurring conflict? drama? has a mindset of a 15 y.o? if so, avoid
- Avoid anyone who is injury prone no matter how good they are
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I think that football had become more complex which in turn led to various roles being broken down into specialized roles. What SAF used to do is now done by the head coach, the head of recruitment and the sporting director with new roles such as the data analyst making the job even easier for the head coach. That has many advantages.
A- It make the club less reliant on 1 person. SAF for example was bigger than the club. He could hire his own brother as head of scouting and he could argue with the major shareholders and keep his job. When he left the whole building came down like a house of cards.
B- It makes it easier for the club to pinpoint weaknesses and to ratify it. For example if the team is coached brilliantly but we have too many injuries then its probably the fitness team's fault. If the team is doing well but most of our new signings aren't making it to first team then its the recruitment fault etc
C- Specialized people can focus on specialized aspects on the game 24/7 (ex transfers, data analysis, coaching)
This is a common trend in almost every industry. For example in modelling the super models of the 90s are gone and replaced by generic people no one can even remember their name. Same thing is happening in Wrestling. Hulk Hogan, Cena, the Rock, the Andre the Giant and the Undertaker had been replaced by vanilla wrestlers with great athletic feats but with the same charisma of Paul Scholes. The same is happening in football. SAF, Ancelotti, Van Gaal, Mourinho and Pep are being phased and replaced by what? Carrick? Arteta? Maresca? Chivu? Spaletti? It's a snooze fest out there.
These days the head coach role is primarily two fold. A- he must be able to absorb the mountain of information being given to him by several outlets (data analyst, fitness team etc) and come out with a tactic that works. B- He must be able to sell that tactic to his players. That isn't easy considering that tactics need to be tweaked on a regular basis and then they must be sold to the modern footballer whose rich, spoiled and lack the football IQ of past stars (modern football had dubbed them too by preferring athleticism/pace over talent/football brain).
In such world everyone becomes temporary and expendable. Real had 7 managerial changes in 10 years despite winning so much. Barca had 7 as well, Inter had 8 while Bayern had 9. The moment that head coach can't keep up they are replaced. That's were football is heading to.
How are we similar to Borough?
Position-wise they finished 4th and made the play-offs which was their target. Clearly an improvement over Carrick's 10th placed finish the year prior.
But the man who replaced Carrick, Rob Edwards, left/resigned in November to accept an offer form the Prem to coach Wolves (who now got relegated, lol) and he got replaced by a Swedish coach from Hammarby mid-way through the season. He brought the playoffs home in the run from from November till now.
Important to mention though: When Carrick first took over 3 months into the 22/23 season, they were 1 point above relegation after 16 or 17 games. He finished top 4, leading them to the playoffs bu they failed to make it to the Prem. The next two seasons he finished 8th then 10th and got eventually sacked, however the transfer policy of Boro at that time was criticised. They had more outgoings than incomings and a negative net spend. This year they had a huge summer where they sold a handful of players, a couple going for good money, and then they brought in no less than 20 new players, 15 on permanent transfer and 5 on loan, with a positive net spend. They did a big rehaul of the squad. Despite a change of managers mid-way through the season, the team succeeded in its targets.
The conclusion from me is that he was a "steady the ship" kinda manager and unexceptional during his time there. The trajectory of Boro, given its success despite 3 managerial changes in the space of 6 months, was clearly more influenced by the the transfers and the quality of the squad rather than the head coach themselves.
Carrick is a young manager, this was only his first job and he will surely have learnt from this experience. But unless he had some incredible development in that time, the lesson here is to not expect him to elevate the squad to a level far above their individual qualities and to focus on giving him a strong squad because he will likely do only as good as the squad he is given. He is a calm, stoic character, so generally he has a high floor because he doesn't fall out with his players causing lockerroom chaos the way Moutinho, Conte etc. do when things don't go well.
Finally, the outlier here is also the discussion over coaches/trainers, because here at United he will have access to top-level coaches who might be the ones who work to elevate the level of the players. And thus the head coach here might lean more towards managing games, personalities, interacting with the board/DoF and providing the general direction of the team, rather than being the one who directly works with the players to develop the individuals and team's style of play.
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Thanks.
The other thought is that how many managers, even from the championship, could replicate the tactics he's deployed thus far post city and achieve similar results?
They don't really have a choice. He's done very well. The players love him and the training. The senior players are asking for him to be mad manager. The atmosphere around the training ground and club is really good. The obvious names aren't available this summer.
I would like iraola personally, but I think Carrick has done enough to deserve his chance for an entire season. What if Utd have stumbled onto their own Arteta? We don't know.
Anyone who comes in now will be compared to Carrick. Lose a game and it will be Utd would have won that under Carrick.
Funny how many people forget that Carrick started to do « worse » after Boro sold their best players.
I think we should stop thinking of our manager as the « maybe he’s our new Fergie » or « our Arteta ».
If Carrick does one more year with us and reaches top 4 again, securing CL football again, then we can move on to a better coach if there’s one available, from a position of strength. It allows us to continue building a stronger core of the team and having a better squad to work with for the new « better » manager
They absolutely do have a choice. No billion dollar entity functions without the most comprehensive due diligence at every level. Except United that is. Lack of due diligence is how you end up with Amorim. How you end up with Sancho. How you end up with Ashworth. This is not to say that Carrick isn't the right man for the job and that he doesn't deserve it, he may well be, but to simply offer him the job without thorough risk assessments, interviewing any/all other potential candidates, having a full understanding of his long term vision etc is, quite frankly, incompetence of the highest level.
Of course, that is all assuming that the social media buzz is true and he is United manager in everything but name only. It might be that behind the scenes they are carrying out a thorough assessment and they are testing out other managers, we don't know. If he's offered the job after all due diligence, then the club and Carrick deserve all the support. But without that, if things go south quickly, then the club deserves any inevitable fallout.