Five Points from Five Games: Carrick Is Not Manchester United's Problem, and That Is the Bad News

Michael Carrick called the sacking rumours ridiculous, and he was right in a narrow sense

Two days before the trip to Craven Cottage, Michael Carrick stood in front of the press and called the rumours about his job ridiculous. He was right in a narrow sense: nobody at Old Trafford has signed a dismissal letter, nobody has issued a public ultimatum. But football does not run on paperwork. It runs on results, and Manchester United's results after seven matches this season are telling a story nobody in the boardroom wants to hear.

Two wins in seven. One win in five Premier League games, on 30 August against Ipswich Town. Two defeats, two draws, the latest on Saturday, 3 October, against Fulham. In the Champions League, Carrick's side won 4-0, but the opponent was Sabah Baku, and beating Sabah Baku only confirms that United can still flatten teams several levels below them.

Five points from five games. That is Manchester United's worst start since the Premier League began.

I have watched enough of this club's seasons to recognise a pattern: when United start badly, everyone argues about the manager and almost nobody argues about structure. This debate is no different. But these seven matches do not say that Carrick is a bad coach. They say that Manchester United are still exactly who they were last season, with a new name on the bench.

Context: a contract to 2028 and a squad without a Plan B

Carrick signed a deal until 2028, with an option for a further year until 2029, in the summer, after leading the team back into the Champions League. For a man who won everything under Alex Ferguson as a player and impressed at Middlesbrough as a coach, that contract was a fair reward for an overachieving season. It was also a familiar trap: once a club believes the problem is solved, it stops solving the problem.

Seven matches later, the team have not changed one bit from last season. Same mistakes, same problems, same inconsistency in results. That is the description coming out of England, and I have no reason to dispute it, because what I rewatch in full-match footage shows a side that has not lost its identity — it has simply never had an identity other than that of a collective living off individual moments.

In the summer window, United spent a total of £150 million on Youri Tielemans, Santos and Carlos Baleba. Baleba, the most anticipated of the three, has not yet been seen because of an ankle problem. The rest of the English market spent far more: Tottenham £315 million, Chelsea £348 million, Manchester City £451 million. Liverpool spent £227 million, Arsenal £195 million. Even Ipswich Town, newly promoted, spent £190 million, and Hull City spent £151 million — one million more than United.

That fact deserves a pause, because it gets used in two opposite ways depending on who is talking. Carrick's defenders use it as a shield: you cannot demand more from a manager given less than half of Tottenham and under a third of City. His critics use it as proof of poor planning. Both readings are right on the surface and both miss the deeper layer: the problem is not the money, it is that the money bought a squad with no fallback at any position.

Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot are the first-choice full-backs and they have no adequate cover. Midfield lacks both creativity and leadership. Up front, everything still revolves around Marcus Rashford, back from his loan spell at Barcelona and obliged to play to justify a salary of £325,000 a week. Nobody scores consistently, despite Matheus Cunha, Benjamin Sesko and Joshua Zirkzee — three different strikers, three different skill sets, none of them served by a system built for him.

Behind all of it sits the governance story: years under the Glazers, then Jim Ratcliffe's spending cuts, leaving Carrick with a squad in desperate need of rebuilding while being handed just enough money to patch a few holes. The fixture list after the international break is unforgiving: Tottenham in the league, Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, then Leeds in the Premier League.

Seven matches and not one structural change

I began following United from Valencia through full-match footage rather than highlight reels, a professional habit formed years ago. Watch a team through highlights and you see results. Watch through full matches and you see process, and United's process this season exposes three problems that have nothing to do with the name on the bench.

The first is dependence on one winger to create everything. Rashford returned from Barcelona and instantly became the centre of the attacking system — not in the way a system works, but in the way an emergency solution works. The ball goes to his feet in every transition, the left channel is overused, and when Rashford is double-marked, United have no second option beyond recycling the ball backwards. A team without a second outlet is a team dependent on one man's form.

The second is a midfield with no brain. Tielemans, Santos and Baleba are players who can look good inside a finished system, but none of them sets the tempo. No midfielder forces the team to move with him, and the result is that United's lines stretch with every phase: the defence drops, the attack detaches, and the space between the lines becomes free property for opponents. That is why this team can win 4-0 against a weak side and get overrun in the decisive minutes against an equal one.

The third is a full-back department with no rotation. Shaw and Dalot play almost every minute, and when one of them runs out of legs — inevitable with Champions League football — United lose control of the width of the pitch. Without a backup full-back, you cannot stretch the opponent. Without stretching the opponent, you cannot open central space. Without central space, you go long.

Those three problems explain why results remain erratic despite a changed coach, despite tactical tweaks, despite press conferences about progress. Manchester United are not losing because the tactics are wrong. They are losing because the squad structure cannot sustain any tactic for more than twenty minutes.

Everyone sees the ball, I see the hand drawing the game

That is not a slogan I use to open analyses. It is something I learned in 2026, as a second-year sociology student in Valencia, when I stumbled on the UEFA Youth League final between Real Madrid Castilla and RB Salzburg. My friends cared only about the 3-2 scoreline. I was absorbed by Salzburg pressing with seven players at once, something no La Liga first team dared to do at the time. I wrote a 2,000-word piece on my personal blog claiming Spanish football would have to borrow the idea within three years. Three years later, high pressing became the dominant trend in Europe.

The tactical trick from Spanish youth football is present all over Europe. But it only appears at clubs with the structure to receive it. Salzburg pressed with seven because all seven knew exactly where to be when the ball was lost. Manchester United do not press collectively this season, because nobody knows exactly where to be when Rashford loses the ball on the left touchline. Two teams can cover the same kilometres. One has a system, the other runs in vain. Distance-covered metrics will call both of them equally committed.

That is why I do not trust those metrics when judging a coach. Distance covered and sprints are packaged as proof of effort, but running into the wrong position still produces a beautiful number. The only trustworthy measure is the repeatability of structure: a good team can play badly, but it must play badly in the same way. United have played badly in three different ways across seven games, and that is the clearest evidence the problem sits deeper than the bench.

In the transfer window people read spreadsheets, I read a novel about greed

£150 million for three players sounds like serious investment until you place it next to the rest of the market. But the striking part is not the gap to Chelsea or Manchester City. The striking part is United's position in the spending table: below Ipswich Town, newly promoted, with £190 million, and below Hull City with £151 million.

For a club with commercial revenue among the highest in Europe and a 74,000-seat stadium, spending less than a promoted side is not a financial tragedy. It is a choice. And when a club chooses to spend below its capacity while still setting a Champions League target, it transfers risk from the balance sheet to the manager's chair. That is how big clubs operate when they no longer believe in a project: they do not cut the budget, they cut accountability.

The paradox is that United remain among the highest wage payers in the league. Rashford's £325,000 a week shapes how a club makes decisions. When a player earns at the top of the squad's pay scale, he effectively has a starting spot — not because the system needs him, but because the wage bill needs him to justify itself. That is the wage-bill paradox: at Manchester United, contracts pick the XI before the manager does.

A club spending £150 million on three signings while paying top-tier wages to a player back from a loan spell is not building a squad. It is managing a crisis. Tielemans, Santos and Baleba are sensible signings in an inflated market, but sensible is not the same as sufficient. A deep-lying organiser, a backup full-back and a striker served correctly are still missing at Old Trafford, and none of those three names fills all three gaps.

The blind spot: how the Ferguson legacy shields a manager from scrutiny

There is something I want to say plainly, even if it upsets part of my readership. Carrick having been Ferguson's player does not shield him from judgement. It makes judgement harder, because every criticism gets read as a betrayal of a legacy. But a football club cannot run on gratitude.

Put an unknown coach in the same situation — five points from five games, a squad without depth, an attack dependent on one player — and the pressure would be far greater than what Carrick faces. That pressure does not come from results. It comes from a question nobody at Old Trafford wants to answer: if the problem is not the manager, then changing the manager is ritual, not solution.

And ritual always has volunteers. The English press reports that Fabian Hürzeler of Brighton and Keith Andrews of Brentford are in the running. Antonio Conte is mentioned even more, thanks to what he did at Chelsea, though his Tottenham spell was far less convincing. Those three names represent three different models — a young structure-imposing coach, a coach building from organisational foundations, and a coach of short, emotionally charged cycles. A club treating all three as viable options has not decided what kind of coach it needs; it has only decided it needs a new name.

#BringAmorimBack and the limits of emotional demands

Alongside those rumours, a section of United's support is calling for Ruben Amorim's return. On X, several accounts have used #BringAmorimBack to urge the board to act. Technically, the deal is far more complicated than a hashtag: Amorim is in charge of AC Milan and under contract until 2029, with an option for a further year until 2030.

I understand the emotion behind it. When the present is empty, people turn to a past with a clear shape. But a manager is not a contract you can undo, and a club is not a save file you can reload. If Amorim left Old Trafford under contested circumstances, his success at Milan proves nothing except that Milan have a better structure to receive his ideas. Dragging him back to a place without that structure simply replays a script already written.

This is why I rank debates about manager names among the least valuable conversations in modern football. I do not write to be agreed with, I write to open the door others keep locked. The door locked at Old Trafford this season does not carry Carrick's name, nor Amorim's, nor Conte's. It carries the name of a board trying to solve a structural problem with personnel decisions.

Three decisive matches and a testable prediction

Carrick will fight for his future across three matches. After the international break, United face Tottenham in the league, Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, and Leeds in the Premier League. Three opponents of three different kinds: a side that spent more than double United's summer outlay and is searching for its identity, a Spanish team capable of punishing any gap between the lines, and a promoted side that will play with every ounce of energy it has.

My prediction, testable after those three games: United need at least four points to keep Carrick in the job through November, and they will reach that total thanks to the Leeds result rather than the other two. I also expect the Atletico match to be the game in which United's gaps between the lines are exposed more clearly than at any point this season.

If that happens, the debate at Old Trafford will return to the familiar question of who comes next. And Manchester United will take another step toward being a big club run like a small one — where every failure can be explained by a name and no failure is ever explained by structure. This team has spent £150 million, pays some of the highest wages in the league, owns one of Europe's largest stadiums, and has five points from five games. The gap between those figures and the football on the pitch is not the story of a wrong manager. It is the story of a club that has forgotten what it wants to be, and is trying to buy the answer back one name at a time.