West Ham manager Julen Lopetegui saved his job a couple of weeks ago on Monday night with an excellent 2-0 win over Newcastle, but he may have put himself even deeper in the doghouse with his latest defeat, 3-1 to Leicester City.
A 3-1 loss to a team that just made it back to the Premier League and is currently in a relegation fight would be bad enough, but what hurt Lopetegui even more is the fact that the Foxes were riding high off the debut of an exciting young manager in Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Likely on the West Ham shortlist before his Leicester City appointment, Van Nistelrooy impressed as the assistant manager for Manchester United and is one of the greatest strikers in Premier League history, having dominated the 2000s with the Red Devils.
Now, it looks like West Ham, facing a must-win match on Monday night against Lopetegui’s former employers Wolves, are looking at another former Manchester United icon with experience as an interim manager at the club.
According to a report from The Mirror’s Chris McKenna, Middlesborough manager Michael Carrick, a former West Ham and Manchester United midfielder and assistant coach, is now on the West Ham managerial shortlist if Lopetegui were to be fired.
Carrick was known as a coach on the field during his playing days, beloved by teammates and fans, and is legitimately one of the most underrated midfielders in the history of the Premier League and English football.
He’s also a great manager, which comes as a surprise to nobody, and he fits into the profile of the kind of “general” in midfield who inevitably becomes a world-class manager.
Carrack has won a Championship Manager of the Month award a couple of seasons ago and has done well at Middlesborough, outperforming expectations. The club is currently fifth in the Championship and could yet make the Premier League in the near future if Carrick stays.
Although West Ham could hire a more established manager, Carrick is young, exciting, knows the club, has a lot of upside, and is much better than some of the proposed alternatives like former Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag and Borussia Dortmund coach Edin Terzic – both fired by their clubs after poor league seasons in 2023/24.
Joe Soriano