The Carrick decision

With Carrick vastly outperforming all reasonable expections in terms of results, but with his system also showing undisputable tactical gaps, United face a complicated choice.

Stick with Carrick, convinced things will improve with more time and more suitable players, or look for a big managerial upgrade, the sort of which might not be available this summer. The issue with going with Carrick is that:

1) United don’t seem to have deep tactical knowledge in their sporting department, people with real authority who could work with Carrick, e.g. on a plan to fix pressing next season. Is Wilcox supposed to be doing that?

2) the failure to address systematic issues then usually leads to the club trying to overcompensate by building for that manager in a frantic fashion, impeding long-term squad development (see: ETH, RA, etc)

What ends up happening is the club spending too much on players and profiles that have dubious potential, while also neglecting and not investing enough in key areas, regardless of who the manager is. Not saying it will happen with Carrick.

But I’ve always maintained United need much more tactical knowledge and authority in all club areas, to be able to support - and, crucially, challenge - the manager.

What we’ve seen in recent years is an attempt to support managers with smarter recruitment and better operational execution.

But we’re yet to see United provide the context and knowledge for managers to adapt, grow, develop and overcome. Tactical issues that ETH and RA had, evident for months, largely went unresolved.

It’s been too much of “let the coach figure it out”, waiting for a divine intervnetion, instead of “this needs to be dealt with, let’s come up with a reasonable plan of action”.

The club should aim for a more modern, hollistic approach, to completely allign different departments and stop yearning for a miracle-man to take care of it all.

The issue with the 2nd approach - going for someone else - is clear.

Carrick has done so well thus far that it would represent a serious gamble to ditch him, unless the club executives are absolutely certain they are bringing an upgrade. But, alas - who makes that call?

In my opinion, the club will decide to keep Carrick this summer, give him a slightly shorter deal than usual (2 seasons), and try to build for a possession-heavy approach that he favors and the executives prefer.

The turnaround he’s been overseeing is simply too great to ignore. That being said, I do think the club also need to work out a long-term tactical plan with Carrick, to make sure mistakes made with recent managerial hires are not repeated.