Three days after Michael Carrick sat at Elland Road and talked about a fresh start, this felt like the end.
He left the Giuseppe Sinigaglia Stadium looking beaten and rather bewildered after Manchester United hit a new low in Lombardy.
Losing 4-1 to Como was more than a defeat. It felt like a surrender. How apt that United played in white. Noussair Mazraoui played in tights, for goodness sake.
So here we go again. How much longer can Carrick last? Hours? Days? Beyond the international break? United have never sacked two managers in the same calendar year, but this cannot go on.
It has been a desperate season and the manner of United’s capitulation in Italy was so dramatic, so shocking, that you wonder if the United hierarchy have a contingency plan in place for something like this.
They are not known for their forward-thinking and the Carrick crisis has engulfed them faster than they could ever have imagined, five months after they handed him a two-year contract in May.
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Still, it would be negligent if they hadn’t at least discussed possible replacements as the feelgood factor of qualifying for the Champions League has given way to utter despair amid the worst start to a league season in 40 years and the heaviest European defeat since 1994.
There are some intriguing possibilities. Brighton’s Fabian Hurzeler is known to have admirers at Old Trafford, but it will not be cheap to extract the German from the Amex Stadium after he signed a new contract in June.
It cost Chelsea £20m in compensation for Graham Potter and his coaching staff in 2022. United are £1billion in debt and cannot keep paying out compensation to change managers.
Julian Nagelsmann and Antonio Conte are both available, as well as two young British options in Eddie Howe and Kieran McKenna.
Perhaps the bigger question now, is who would want the job? United are a club locked in a death spiral, a recurring nightmare, that won’t be ended by replacing one man. It has become a coach’s graveyard since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
They all find a different way to go in the end. David Moyes insisted that he had the backing of the board until the moment he realised he didn’t.
Louis van Gaal left Wembley clutching the FA Cup as if he would gladly have beaten his employers over the head with it after waking up to the fact it was his last match in charge.
Jose Mourinho’s demise was ‘death by a thousand cuts’ according to former United chief Ed Woodward, but leaving Paul Pogba on the bench at Anfield felt like a final act of self-sabotage.
Eddie Howe is out of a job after leaving Premier League rivals Newcastle United in pre-season
Like Carrick, Solskjaer’s mea culpa and apologetic farewell to fans at Watford was a clear sign that the Norwegian knew he was toast. Erik ten Hag remained deluded to the last, even though Ineos had gone behind his back months earlier, and Ruben Amorim cut his own throat by taking them on in public.
Now Carrick’s reign appears to be in its death throes, dragged down by performances that are an insult to this great club and increasingly loud dissent from the dressing-room.
The spotlight is back on Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers again now. On chief executive Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox. Do they act now or allow Carrick to stagger on in the belief that he can yet turn this around?
The hundreds of fans who had stood in the rain for hours in Como and left the ground long before Carrick walked over to apologise at the end have had their say. Now it’s up to United.
