Sacking Carrick won't fix what's wrong at Man Utd
The Carrick sack talk is loud after Leeds, but one league win in seven is about the squad and the people who built it as much as the man picking the team.
One league win in seven games. That's where we are after the 1-1 at Elland Road, and it's our fewest wins at this stage of a top-flight season since 1986-87. It's six without a win in all competitions, and the only league win was 5-2 against Ipswich on 30 August. So the Carrick sack question is a fair one, and everyone's asking it. My answer is that sacking him now would be the club doing the easy thing instead of the right one.
What's actually been reported
A lot of what's flying about is noise, so here's what's on the record and who said it.
TEAMtalk reported on 15 October that Antonio Conte's intermediaries had been back in touch with United's hierarchy to say he's ready to take over straight away, while making clear that doesn't mean formal talks have started. Reports in Italy went further and claimed he was close to an agreement. Fabrizio Romano's response was blunt: "My understanding is that Antonio Conte has no agreement with any club." In the same piece, The Athletic's Laurie Whitwell is quoted saying "I don't believe there is an appetite to change head coach", while also calling Carrick's position "beginning to feel precarious". Romano's other line, on 16 October, was that the club still backs Carrick but needs results quickly.
So the confirmed position is nothing at all, because the club hasn't said a word either way. The reported position, from the people with the best record on United, is that the hierarchy doesn't want a change yet. The Conte agreement is a rumour that's been flatly denied.
The case against Carrick is real
None of this means he's doing a good job. Look at the last two league games. Against Spurs we were a goal up in the 92nd minute against ten men and drew. At Leeds we were a goal up at half-time and drew. That's four points thrown away in a week. Keep them and we'd have 11 points instead of seven, and nobody would be writing about Conte. Both leads went the same way, with the team dropping deeper and deeper and the changes from the bench making no difference.
After Leeds, Carrick said it "felt like a bit of a fresh start" and that "I have no doubts we can go on a good run". A draw at Leeds isn't a fresh start. It's a point. He's responsible for the game management, and that's been poor.
But look at what he's been given
Ben Šeško has been out with a shin problem, and on 10 October Carrick said of the timeline that "at this moment it's still not quite clear". Before Leeds there was still no date, and Sports Mole reported that surgery is an option. So we went to Elland Road with Bryan Mbeumo, a wide forward, as a makeshift number nine.
That isn't bad luck. It's planning. This is a club that finished third last season and went into a year of Champions League football with no real plan for its main striker getting injured. Lisandro Martínez went after Jason Wilcox over the summer window for exactly this, and I said at the time he was right. He was made to apologise, but nobody's shown he was wrong. Carrick didn't put this squad together. Wilcox did, with INEOS signing off on it.
There's one more detail in that TEAMtalk report, and it's unconfirmed, so treat it that way: it says Conte's representatives spoke to Wilcox in the summer, when Conte was keen. If that's true, the same people looked at Conte this summer and stuck with Carrick. Changing their minds after seven league games would tell you more about the people doing the choosing than the man they chose.
The last time it was this bad
The 1986-87 comparison is the bit worth thinking about. That season we were in the bottom four when Ron Atkinson went, and Alex Ferguson was appointed on 6 November 1986. It's the most famous managerial change in the club's history, and it worked. But it didn't work quickly. We finished 11th that season), and in 1989-90, more than three years in, we finished 13th. What fixed United wasn't the sacking. It was a board that gave the new man years to rebuild the whole club, youth system and all, before a trophy came.
Nobody at the top of this club has that kind of patience, and they've shown it. If they sack Carrick in October, the next manager walks into the same squad, with the same hole up front, answering to the same people who built it. Conte is a serious coach, but his first demand would be the one Martínez made: better players. That's a recruitment problem dressed up as a manager problem.
Como on Wednesday
None of that buys Carrick much time. Como away in the Champions League on Wednesday, 5.45pm kick-off, is the next test, and Bournemouth at Old Trafford follows on Sunday. Lose both and the board's patience won't last, and the results would justify it. But if he goes, the questions shouldn't stop with him. Somebody left a Champions League squad playing a winger up front in October, and those same people would be picking the next manager.
