So the Manchester United job has ruined Michael Carrick just like it ruined Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Carrick’s sad, Mea culpa walk across the turf towards his club’s supporters at Como’s Stadio Guiseppe Sinigaglia last night bore a dismal resemblance to that made by one of his many predecessors at Vicarage Road, Watford, almost five years ago.
Solskjaer was to say goodbye to United in tears a couple of days later, a coach broken by a club so dysfunctional and a playing squad so riddled with rot that it had become impossible to manage.
And now it is Carrick’s turn. Another good man on the way, another servant of the club to feel that miserable cocktail of regret, failure and resignation. Another football man with United in his veins who must look around and wonder what on earth a once great club has become.
The question now is who will be stupid enough to put their hand up to follow Carrick into a post he will surely be invited to leave before too long.
The job at Old Trafford used to be one of English football’s most coveted postings. Now it merely represents a fast track to pain, suffering and failure.
Michael Carrick will surely be invited to leave the Manchester United job shortly
Only a football junkie looking for a cheap fix of glamour and status would take it. It still gives you that. Managing United will still provide a man with that quick jolt of adrenaline.
But the reality is that it is a cyanide pill coloured red. Nobody since Sir Alex Ferguson’s day gets out alive. That’s the reality of working at a place where if the lack of football smarts above you don’t get you then the lack of heart in the dressing room surely will.
The thing about United is that the expectation will always be the same. Despite its reduced circumstances, no club expects you to win so regularly and monotonously as this one does.
The modern United is not set up to succeed. The squad is not good enough, the ownership continues to milk its revenues from within and its executive structure makes bad decisions.
Still, though, their managers are expected to win and to compete with proper, well-run football clubs like Arsenal at the top of the Premier League. It’s impossible. The road back to the top of the English and European game is longer than it has ever been for a United manager but that’s the remit nevertheless.
Carrick should never have been given the job last summer. The red flag comparisons with Solskjaer were so numerous, it was terrifying. But whoever succeeds him is a fool to think success can come quickly to this club in its current form.
It’s a place that pays footballers who don’t want to run and who talk a better game than they play. A place where even the rehabilitation of a captain like Bruno Fernandes has now been derailed by an environment where not a single person in the building bar the manager seems willing to take responsibility for failure.
To listen to Bruno Fernandes talk after last night’s dismantling by Como in Italy was to be granted a snapshot of United’s rotting soul. Back in the day when United did things properly on and off the field, Fernandes would have spent the following few days juggling footballs on his own in the car park. On Saturday, when United face Bournemouth, he will doubtless lead the team out wearing the captain’s armband.
Eddie Howe would be a fool to go anywhere near Old Trafford in the current climate
The Premier League’s latest young tyro Fabian Hurzeler of Brighton should avoid United
In terms of their future, United are known to have feelers out for replacement candidates. The former German national team and Bayern Munich coach Julian Nagelsmann is thought to be near the top of a provisional list. Antonio Conte – once of Tottenham and Chelsea – would like to be on it.
Both will back themselves to be the man to work the miracle simply because managers always do. It’s the way they are made. The job would play to Conte’s ego and he would come with nothing to lose. He would also fail, and do so quickly, but it hasn’t stopped United making bad appointments before.
But as for men like Nagelsmann, Eddie Howe and the Premier League’s latest young tyro Fabian Hurzeler of Brighton, they would be fools to go anywhere near Old Trafford.
All three are coaches whose next posting will determine their career trajectory. They need to go somewhere that provides them with a platform to develop, grow and succeed. They need foundations. United presents only a trapdoor without a latch.
In the 13 and a half years since Sir Alex Ferguson left, seven have walked through the door thinking they had reached the top of the mountain. Seven have crawled out again on their knees.
This is what United does to people these days. There are some with Carrick’s best interests at heart who feared for him when he took the job. They had seen the evidence and followed the trends.
Bruno Fernandes captains a club where not a single person bar the manager seems willing to take responsibility for failure
What will come of him is painful to consider. Once he has done the rounds of the podcasts and told his stories of an environment where self-harm has become a culture, he will look down at his feet and see a career in management lying in ruins.
He is not alone in that. Others, meanwhile, count their blessings of a lucky escape.
The England manager Thomas Tuchel, for example, spoke to United more than once when they looked to replace Erik ten Hag in the summer of 2024. He ultimately withdrew from the process.
United failed the sniff test. He didn’t like the rather unpredictable nature of what he saw. And this from a bloke who once worked at Chelsea.
