He Didn't Chase The Job. He Earned It

Mainoo says the players would die for him on the pitch. The numbers say he should already have the job. The alternatives say there isn't a better option. The case for Carrick is closed.

The Guardian reported Monday morning that Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox are preparing to formally offer Michael Carrick the permanent Manchester United job. After Sunday's 3-2 win over Liverpool, the question is no longer whether he gets it. The question is when.

We wrote ten days ago that Carrick wouldn't chase the job. He never did. That's why he might get it. Sunday's result, and the dressing room reaction that followed, have moved the case from theoretical to overwhelming.

The Numbers

Carrick has won ten of his fourteen Premier League matches in this spell as interim manager. Thirty-two points from a possible forty-two. Per stat-account compilations circulating since Sunday, that's the most of any Premier League manager over the same span.

He has won eight of his nine Premier League home games as United manager. Including his brief spell in 2021, he is the sixth manager and first English manager to win eight or more of his first nine PL home matches. The last to do it was Antonio Conte at Chelsea in 2016/17. Conte won the league that season.

United took the season into January looking finished. They are now third, six points clear of fourth, clinched Champions League next season, and have completed the Premier League double over Liverpool for the first time since Louis van Gaal in 2015/16.

These are not interim numbers. These are appointment numbers.

The Dressing Room

Kobbie Mainoo, after scoring the winner Sunday, told Sky Sports about Carrick: "He's played a huge part in it, all the confidence he gives all the players. You want to follow him and fight for him and die for him on the pitch."

Matheus Cunha, the same evening: "I think he has the magic with like these Ferguson times. He's a pleasure, and of course I think he deserves it."

Reporting from multiple outlets has Bruno Fernandes and Harry Maguire urging the board to confirm Carrick. The captain and the longest-serving senior player in the dressing room have confirmed what seems to be the consensus in the dressing room. There is no faction telling the board to look elsewhere. There is no leaked dissent. There is, by every account, a unified squad.

In a club whose dressing room over the last decade has been characterized more often by reports of player unrest than results, that uniformity is its own piece of evidence.

The Competition

The shortlist of alternatives breaks into three categories.

The first category is gambles. Andoni Iraola has done excellent work at Bournemouth on a small budget, but managing Bournemouth and managing Manchester United are different jobs and the historical hit rate of taking a manager from a stylistic outlier club to a fanbase-and-pressure giant is not strong. Xavi has Barcelona on his CV but left under uncertain circumstances and would arrive with the same questions every recent United appointment has arrived with.

The second category is unavailable. Julian Nagelsmann is contracted to Germany through the World Cup. Thomas Tuchel is contracted to England through the same and has signed an extension. Carlo Ancelotti is at Brazil and has signed an extension. Mauricio Pochettino is at the United States and hasn't been reliably linked.

Nagelsmann is a good manager, but the question is what an appointment would actually look like. Would United wait until after the World Cup to confirm? Or would announcing the move beforehand risk a Julen Lopetegui situation, where the Spain manager was fired before the 2018 World Cup after Real Madrid named him as their next coach? Managing United and a national team are not the same conflict as managing Real Madrid while preparing Spain. But at best, a parallel appointment is a media distraction. At worst, it splits a manager's loyalties and priorities at exactly the moment a tournament demands all of them.

The third category is fantasy. Luis Enrique has won everything available at PSG and is going nowhere this summer.

This is what Berrada and Wilcox are reportedly weighing against Carrick: a list of either gambles, contracted internationals, or names that exist on shortlists for engagement and not for plausibility. Carrick has won ten of fourteen. He is here. He wants the job. The squad wants him to have it. The board has to make the call between someone who has earned it on the pitch and someone they would have to negotiate, gamble on, or wait for.

The Honest Part

Not everything has been clean. United lost at home to a ten-man Newcastle. United lost at Leeds, missing Mainoo and coming off a longer rest gap than the schedule normally allows for. The style of play has been pragmatic, not expansive. The team is not always playing the kind of football that evokes the attacking days of old.

Carrick's tenure at Middlesbrough started well and ended difficult, in part because the club sold his best attacking options across multiple windows. United is not a selling club, and the squad will be added to this summer rather than thinned. The structural reason Boro's trajectory turned bad probably does not apply at Old Trafford. But the pragmatism is real, and it should be acknowledged honestly.

What Carrick has done is set a system that fits the players he was given, then made small changes match-to-match to maximize what those players can do. Sunday's halftime change against Liverpool, with Amad on for an injured Sesko and the team set up to break, was the kind of in-game decision he has made repeatedly. The seventy-fifth-minute change with Dorgu on for Mbeumo, two minutes before Mainoo scored the winner, was another.

Whether the football evolves into something more expansive once the squad is reinforced is a fair open question. The case for Carrick is not that he has solved Manchester United. It is that he has steadied a club that needed steadying, and earned the chance to keep building.

The Healing Argument

Manchester United have been a difficult place to work for a long time. The post-Ferguson era is now over a decade old. The toxicity that built up around the club through Ten Hag's second season, the Amorim hire, the Amorim sacking, the recruitment chaos, and the constant churn of managers and reports of dressing room friction, has been one of the most consistent stories about the club for years.

Carrick has played the role of the steady hand. He has put players in the positions they are most likely to succeed in rather than forcing them into a system. Mainoo speaks publicly about the difference. Sesko, who scored two goals in his first sixteen appearances under Amorim, has scored nine in his time under Carrick. Bruno is having the best individual creative season any player has ever had in the Premier League era, partly because Carrick built the team around the player most capable of carrying it.

The argument for Carrick is not that he is the most exciting hire available. The argument is that he is the right hire for what Manchester United needs right now: a manager the players want to play for, who has earned results, who knows the institution, and who is not a gamble.

Earned, Not Given

Berrada and Wilcox are reportedly close to making the offer. They should make it.

Carrick said after Sunday's match: "I love doing what I'm doing. It feels pretty natural if I'm totally honest."

That is what the United manager should sound like. Not someone selling himself for the job. Someone already doing it.

He didn't chase it. He earned it.