Michael Carrick: Is he the right person for Manchester United?

He did not change as manager. Always polite and friendly but never makes headlines for it.

His wild celebration after a 3-1 win over Sheffield United in February 2023, sparked by some pre-match jitters, is remembered for being out of keeping with Carrick’s normal behaviour.

One of the conversations that took place in the dressing room before the match while gathering background information on Carrick is recalled in this article. As players on the pitch complete their warm-ups, many managers want to be left alone in silence. Others obsess over their tactics board. On this particular day, Carrick was engaged in a conversation about old TV remotes.

“Never high, never low,” says the source. “This is Michael.

“He doesn’t waste 10 words when he does that. At Middlesbrough, everyone loved him.”

Everyone except the fans in the end.

When Carrick arrived on Teesside in October 2022, he revived a club battling relegation and did so by playing exciting, winning, possession-based football.

After losing their first match to Preston, Boro won 16 of their 22 league matches. Carrick used a number of different formations, including three in defense at times, and scored three or more goals on 11 occasions.

When they beat Preston in the second leg at the Riverside Stadium on March 18, they were three points away from automatic promotion. Striker Chuba Akpom was on pace to score 29 goals for the season, and a return to the Premier League after a six-year absence was on the cards.

But Buro’s form deserted them at the wrong moment. They have won two of their last eight games, missing out on automatic promotion by 16 points and losing to Coventry in an attritional semi-final that yielded just one goal in two games.

It didn’t get any better for Carrick at Boro, though, as he continued for two more seasons.

The first of these never recovered from a poor start, when they collected two points from their first seven games. The second team lacked consistency and five straight defeats from January to February ensured there would be no late run in the playoffs.

On the plus side, there was a 23-24 UEFA Cup semi-final, where Boro eventually lost to Chelsea.

Carrick could also point to Akpom being sold to Ajax in the summer of 2023, five key players not returning on loan, and Morgan Rogers’ £15m exit to Aston Villa in February 2024 as compensation for not reaching the same heights, as Boro have benefited from the work he has done in developing players.

Supporters didn’t see the situation quite the same way.

In the end, they felt he was sticking to a 4-2-3-1 formation and did not think it was working. “No plan B” was a familiar criticism.

Carrick responded, “I’m not going to change the style of play, it’s what I know and what I believe. We wouldn’t be a good coach if we suddenly took a completely different path,” resembling Ruben Amorim.

However, Carrick can clearly see the benefit of tactical substitutions.

On Match Day Two in October, recapping United’s win over Brighton, Carrick explained how his old club achieved their success by dropping attacking players and Luke Shaw pushing forward, condensing the spacey midfield duo of Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes who were asked to cover.

“Ultimately, it’s a numbers game and a space game,” Carrick explained.

“You can see that something is building with the connections.”