Michael Carrick’s Appointment Needs To Be the End of Man United's Tactical Disasters
I genuinely am thrilled Michael Carrick looks set to get the Manchester United job permanently. Beating City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs, and Villa in half a season is not chump change. Not because he’s a club legend, vibes, or nostalgia. Because he, like Ole before him, is actually proving he understands what this club is.
Ever since Sir Alex retired, United have chased every form of manager under the sun. We tried to get elite managerial legends like Van Gaal and Mourinho, but they were showing their limits as the sport changed around them. We've recently tried newer “system managers” with rigid philosophies that required the squad to completely bend to their identity with Erik Ten Hag and Ruben Amorim that blew up in our faces. But United historically have never thrived under these conditions. Casemiro's recent interview with Rio highlighted the similarities to Real Madrid and United in terms of club culture and laid out the winning expectations and profile of players/coaches they'd bring in. While Zidane and Ancelotti have just been described as passive with God squads underneath them, they both had a tactical structure that optimized the players strengths that made them play directly and with spontaneity.
Even Fergie, despite absolutely having tactical principles and elite adaptability, built teams around maximizing players, personalities, confidence, transitions, freedom, and mentality. His greatest strength wasn’t locking players into a rigid structure. It was evolving constantly and getting the best out of people. Managers with strong tactics but ideas that demand perfect profiles and near-total control of every phase of play is not what this club is. Far be it from playing one game a week, Mike has squeezed out far more from all this than most people would. Champions League qualification from a disastrous position last season and mentality around the club, Bruno is playing like a Ballon D'or contender, Mainoo looking calm and elite in midfield, Sesko finally giving us a true striker presence, and best of all, the team actually fighting for each other again. Carrick got us here because he has stripped everything down and just gotten the simple things right.
Obviously there's kinks to work out since we still cannot control many games with this midfield we have, but that is to be expected with a Frankenstein's monster of squad building we've used over the years and that begins with controlling possession. Under Amorim, we were elite out of possession but treated the ball like a fucking grenade the second we won it back. Carrick simplified everything. Quicker vertical play, cleaner passing from Kobbie and Bruno, more positional freedom, less overcoaching. He actually DOES have a system even when it's limited to the personnel we have.
Do I think we’re title contenders with a good summer? Fuck no. 😂 The squad still has massive issues with depth, midfield reliance on Kobbie and Casemiro (who is leaving), and fullback quality. But for the first time in years, it actually feels like there’s a FOUNDATION to what we're doing that doesn't take an entire season to establish. Do I think Carrick is like Fergie? Absolutely not. There will never be another one of him and the club's identity being tied so strongly to Sir Alex that everyone would do his bidding to the point the club builds its image around him is a rarity in this sport nowadays that only a handful of clubs have. That's both a blessing and a curse to follow. This could all easily go sideways just like appointing Nagelsmann or Iraola would.
Modern football has become obsessed with systems and tactical dogma, but Real Madrid just spent the last decade winning major trophies largely through elite man management, adaptability, confidence, and empowering world class players. Zidane and Ancelotti are proof that there’s more than one way to build greatness. What needs to happen now is setting the tone for the entire club’s identity beyond just Michael Carrick himself. Managers come and go all the time, but the elite clubs survive because the institution outlives the coach. That’s what City, Liverpool, Madrid, Bayern, Dortmund, and Barcelona all eventually figured out. They recruit players, coaches, academy talent, analysts, and sporting directors toward a consistent footballing philosophy so that every managerial transition becomes evolution instead of total collapse when they leave. Even midtable clubs like Brentford, Bournemouth, and Brighton all figured out as well.
What Carrick represents isn’t just better form. It’s the possibility of rediscovering what Manchester United's football actually IS. That identity has to become bigger than one manager if he fails. If Carrick succeeds, the goal shouldn’t be building “Michael Carrick’s Manchester United.” It should be rebuilding Manchester United into a club where the next coach after him inherits players already built for the same footballing culture instead of starting from scratch all over again. I'm hoping INEOS actually can make that happen, but we will see.