Man Utd secure Champions League spot – why not appoint Michael Carrick now?
“You want to follow him. You want to fight for him. You want to die on the field for him. We showed that today.”
After Manchester United beat Liverpool 3-2 in the Premier League, Kobbie Mainoo’s assessment of coach Michael Carrick on Sky Sports resonated.
It resonated because when Mainoo scored the winner in the 77th minute at Old Trafford, the stadium announcer hailed the locally-born 21-year-old, who signed his new long-term contract on Thursday.
Mainoo became the club’s poster boy.
This is surprising because his bid to join Napoli on loan last summer was rejected, he did not start a league game for the first five months of the season and he was set for difficult discussions over his future before receiving the Ruben Amorim boot in January.
Former Manchester City defender Micah Richards told BBC Sport: “Watching him play you can really see the difference Carrick has made in terms of the previous manager not believing in him and then the new manager coming in and putting so much faith in him. You can see that self-belief in his performances.”
Getting Mainoo back on the field and convincing him to play at a high level is just one of the tasks Carrick has completed as he has been asked to guide his former club until the end of the season.
It has also restored captain Bruno Fernandes to the favourite’s position and has overseen wins against City, Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Chelsea and now Liverpool; United have completed the league double against their old rivals for the first time since 2015-16.
The 44-year-old also led United back to the Champions League after a two-year absence.
Typically, Carrick did not want to talk about his future.
“Whatever will happen will happen,” he said.
But while he was criticized by the media at his post-match briefing, he appeared to go a little further than he had before when speaking about the situation.
“I love doing what I do,” he said. “It feels quite natural. It’s a good position to sit in.”
Over the past four months there has been a lot of focus on what Carrick is not.
He is not a person who performs at press conferences or on the sidelines. He doesn’t attack like Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid.
His most telling reactions on Sunday came in his exchanges with fourth official Anthony Taylor when he thought the decisions were going against him in the first half.
We don’t know how he will react to playing every three or four days instead of once a week, and sometimes not even that, even though key players performed well initially at Middlesbrough before being sold.
We also don’t know how he will react to a series losing because it hasn’t happened yet. United won 10 of 14 matches under Carrick. No team collected more points during this period.
This is the truth. If they choose to replace Carrick after three games, the United hierarchy will ignore it.
Unless Paris St-Germain manager Luis Enrique can be persuaded to leave Europe’s best team behind for a move to the Premier League, it is hard to imagine United finding an acceptable alternative to either fans chanting Carrick’s name after the final whistle or players like Mainoo, who have repeatedly, if not outspokenly, praised their boss.
