Carrick sack inevitable at Man Utd; Conte needed now to ‘scorch the earth’
Manchester United losing to Como surely means that Michael Carrick will be sacked, but who next?
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Man Utd haircut challenge I’m going to cut my hair when United win one game. Ant, MUFC
It’s men against ‘here boy’ It’s half-time between Como and Manchester United.
It’s been rudderless stuff again from Utd.
Michael Carrick when he’s standing on the line looks like a man holding a leash scanning the park for his dog but afraid to move and look for it in case it comes back to that spot.
I think those are his tactics too.
That’s it. John Mac, Cork
…Utd just gone 2-0 down. The only real question is “how the hell are we even in the Champions league”. Jon, Cape Town (I’d also want to know how Utd still continue to look like a side that just met in the parking lot)
Como promo Como rightly deserve plaudits as they gave us an absolute lesson tonight. But can someone explain to me how a team who were playing Serie B football a couple of years ago can create a functional and effective football team, yet we have toiled for over a decade and have a team that still cannot do the basics in attack and defence.
You can guarantee that changing manager will just start the same process over and over and over again. Football is a simple game yet we make it look like quantum mechanics.
It hurts my head. Garey Vance, MUFC
READ: Carrick sack coming and he should take Bruno Fernandes with him as Man Utd destroyed by Como
Taking it back I take that back. This is no Sunday league where there is joy in losing matches as well. This is a toxic workplace kind of situation. Someone get in some HR representatives and possibly some professional therapists in. Time to do some sacking. Rahil, MUFC (Big Zirk got a goal, free him, send him back to Serie A where he belongs)
Keep Carrick and carry on We all know the saying “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result” and after the Como defeat, the manager, the club, the fans and the media are all getting that “Anne Boleyn” feeling. It’s coming, we just don’t know when.
But what is that going to solve? We’ve tried coaches with tactical nous, vibes, passion, calmness, none of it has worked. Even a prime Fergie or Pep would take years to turn this around, and that would require the complete backing of the owners. At the moment, there is no manager worth his salt who would even entertain this toxic club.
As painful as it may be, perhaps we should use Carrick to blood the pipeline of promising youth and if we go down, the rebuild could happen out of the spotlight.
I’ve seen us relegated and while it sucked, we came back stronger. Maybe this is what is needed to get the owners to take their thirty pieces of silver and go home. Adidasmufc (there would be a certain irony if both Manchester clubs were relegated this season)
Bring in Eddie Howe
United need someone who can build a new dynasty. Conte would be gone in 2 years probably potless and leaving behind him the burning rotting carcass of the club he inherited. It would be back to square 1 in 2028. Hurzeler could easily struggle with moving from the best functioning PL club to the joint most dysfunctional. However good Hurzeler is, a lot of his success is based on the way Brighton is set up and operates. He didn’t build that. Howe (the current favourite) built mini dynasties at Bournemouth and Newcastle giving one unprecedented yet astonishingly sustainable success and the other its biggest success for 70 years. Howe knows how to build a club and how to reboot one. He tried to sign Mbuemo, Sesko and Cunha and has also fluttered his eyelids at Mainoo and Tielemans in the past. He wouldn’t need any new signings to get Man U out of the CL group stages, back into the CL next season and would win a trophy by 2029, something that looks a long way away right now. Ben Teacher
No, bring in Conte I’m writing this after reading some quotes from both Bruno Fernandes and Michael Carrick after United’s humping in Como, another predictable example of being outplayed by a hungrier, more energetic side for the umpteenth time in a season that’s only 2 months old.
The weight of that sentence is depressing, because in itself it was all too easy to call when United gave Carrick the permanent gig. I have as much of a soft spot for the ex-player-turned-successful-manager story as anyone, and would love to have seen that be the case with Carrick. But I did write in towards the tail end of last season lamenting the sense of Ole déjá vu, while fearing that the board would hand him the reins to appease the fans if nothing more.
All the hallmarks are there: a massive drop-off in intensity and application after a prolonged bounce, with United now scrambling to find what their revised level is.
I’ll admit I didn’t expect things to hit the skids straight away when the new season began. I thought we’d carry some positivity over from the tail end of last season before reality bit after the clocks went back and fixture pile-up took its toll. But here we are, in the last throes of British Summer Time, and United already look to be reaching terminal velocity in a familiar tailspin.
The quotes from Bruno questioning the tactics in the game last night were damning as hell. Carrick’s retort, basically shrugging his shoulders and tossing the blame squarely back at the players, was doubly so. I don’t think this iteration of the team comes back from an exchange like that, and we all know who’ll be the one to get the boot in this situation.
Assuming that Carrick’s card is now marked, I really hope Antonio Conte is the man the club turn to. He would surely command the immediate respect of the majority of the players, and almost certainly bring more intent (with an actual plan/playing style) than Carrick has demonstrated in 9 months now. The risk is that he might scorch the earth at any moment, but I’d be here for that if I’m honest. It’s long overdue at United.
When Ruben Amorim was fired in January, my lingering regret was that he was very clearly in the process of rebuilding the dressing room as a priority. Progression on the pitch wasn’t coming as quickly as anyone would have liked, and his footing wasn’t sure enough to survive calling out Wilcox et al. We’ll obviously never know if he could have eventually assembled a coherent, functioning team free of the egos that have damaged the club for 10+ years, but it was good to see the intent.
Would a coach of Conte’s standing come in with enough currency to fully dictate the club’s on-pitch affairs? To put those players to the test and maybe decide that a couple of expensive INEOS purchases need to be shipped out to make room for his own players? It does feel like we need a gigantic personality in the Klopp/Mourinho mould to kickstart a revival on their terms, to get the fans so far onside that the ownership are left with no choice but to back them. Conte is the only available manager I can see who might fit that bill.
Part of me is full of fear that they might try to destroy Fabian Hurzeler before he reaches 35 years of age though. Keith Reilly
A solution Sack Carrick and install him as interim manager. Fook Yuan Lee
Manchester United and media hypocrisy
Just seen Joe Cole on TNT dissecting the latest MUFC implosion at Como.
According to him, “Michael, who’s a mate of mine” knows exactly where the buck stops. So far so good, I’m following you Joe.
But hang on, what’s that? “It all comes with a asterisk, because the club is a mess and it has been for some time”.
Oh right, I see what’s going on here.
Former *England* golden boy and “one of the lads”, struggling in a job he’s not qualified for – let’s rally round him, the official line is it’s now the club’s fault. It’s the Glazers, it’s Brexit Jim, it’s Wilcox. Hell, it’s even the price of fuel, or Mrs Brown’s Boys.
But when it was *Portuguese* Ruben Amorim struggling this time last year – it was nothing to do with the club, he’d had loads of support, he couldn’t complain. It was his poor English, his stubborn insistence on his “silly” 3-4-3, and him not being experienced enough for the job. This was Sky, TNT, the papers. All of them.
Come on guys. You could at least try to hide it. Andy H, Swansea
A light one to end
Yes, that was f***ing awful. Yes, I wrote a three-page long email about Harry Maguire carrying a curse and deleted it for my own sanity.
But I must say it was lovely surprise that we were spared TNT’s Darren “Fletch” Fletcher chuckling at himself for 90 minutes, while seeking some form of masculine validation from whichever ex-player is sat next to him.
I hope you all enjoyed the usual: “You’d have got your head on that, wouldn’t you Ally?” “Didn’t do that in your day, did they Ally?” “You like a bit of ACDC, don’t you Ally?” “You scored a few like that, didn’t you Ally?” “Love me Ally, why don’t you love me, Ally?
Tit. Simon MUFC
