Almost a year on from his exit, Carrick landed his first permanent head coaching role at Middlesbrough. He inherited a squad languishing in 21st place in the Championship table, just one point above the drop zone, but managed to turn their fortunes around overnight.
Remarkably, Boro won 16 of their first 23 matches under Carrick, who picked up two EFL Manager of the Month awards along the way. They ended the 2022-23 campaign in fourth, sealing a spot in the play-offs, only to suffer a 1-0 aggregate loss to Coventry City across two agonisingly close semi-final legs. Still, Carrick received widespread praise, from both the media and within the dressing room.
“He’s the manager I’ve been dreaming of my whole career,” Chuba Akpom, who clinched the Championship Golden Boot with 28 goals for Boro that season, said. “I want to fight for the manager because he’s shown so much trust and confidence in me. He gave me the freedom to express myself and I appreciate that so much.”
Jonny Howson, Boro's skipper at the time, added to The Athletic: “It’s entertaining. We attack, create, score and control possession. That’s the way Michael played the game.”
Carrick continued to bring fans entertainment in his second season, masterminding a thrilling run to the Carabao Cup semi-finals, and though Boro ultimately finished eighth in the Championship, the Englishman was still awarded a new three-year contract.
Unfortunately, though, there was no progress to speak of in the 2024-25 campaign. Boro slumped to 10th in the table, and club chiefs subsequently pulled the plug on the Carrick project. But things might have been different had it not been for very fine margins. Boro were fifth heading into their final six games, and really should have made the play-offs again. Alas, they only picked up another four points, leaving Carrick in an untenable position.
Still he left the Riverside with a very respectable win percentage of 46.3, the best record in the club's history for managers in the second tier. Carrick was also Boro's longest-serving boss since their relegation from the Premier League in 2017, and proved his coaching chops in a cutthroat division notorious for weeding out the pretenders.