Can Carrick be a success at Old Trafford? Yes. He showed enough in his first season in charge of Boro to prove he has the tools to be a successful head coach and his status as a legendary Manchester United player will buy him time with the Old Trafford support.
But he has to have learned from his experiences on Teesside, and developed a willingness to change and adapt, if he is to be the man to finally turn things around at the club that has always meant so much to him. Rinse and repeat what happened with Boro, and the Manchester United job will swallow him up.
Why did it unravel for Carrick as Boro boss? His first season was hugely positive, his second was regressive, albeit with the caveat that key players had either been sold or left at the end of their loans in the previous summer, but it was the bitterly-disappointing third campaign that ultimately did for him, exposing flaws that have the potential to be equally damaging at Manchester United.
On the pitch, Carrick was found wanting by the end of his Boro reign. His teams were predictable, both in terms of personnel and formation, one-dimensional no matter the state of the game and tediously dull to watch. Possession for possession’s sake, safety-first football rather than the swashbuckling style that had been adopted in season one, formulaic substitutions towards the end of the second half that did nothing to change the course of a game.
Carrick wore his refusal to change tack or make tweaks to his ‘footballing philosophy’ as a badge of honour, but actually it reflected poorly on his abilities as a head coach. Ruben Amorim was rightly derided for remaining wedded to his 3-4-3 system and preferred way of playing while results were nosediving, but on the evidence of his Boro reign, Carrick is cut from the same cloth. He will have to be more flexible and proactive if he is to succeed at Manchester United.
READ MORE:
Kim Hellberg's plan for Leo Castledine and Fin Munroe - and view on Jeremy Sarmiento
Triple Middlesbrough injury update ahead of Friday-night game at West Brom
He will also have to change markedly away from the field of play. By the end of his Boro reign, his demeanour and approach to management had become tiresome. Supporters were sick of his persistent refusal to admit that anything was wrong or do anything that could even remotely be construed as being critical of his players. Everything in the garden was rosy, even if his side were losing at Stoke or Sheffield Wednesday. That won’t wash in his new role. If Manchester United are losing at Wolves, Carrick’s insistence that the “lads are giving their all” won’t wash.
Similarly, while the former England international got away with displaying a touch of aloofness and arrogance in his press dealings while in charge of Boro – evading questions about injuries or team selection, steadfastly refusing to open up and display any kind of emotional sincerity – he is about to be thrust into a completely different kind of spotlight at Old Trafford. Leading Manchester United is like being a conductor of an orchestra – everyone is looking at you for their lead. Whether Carrick’s personality suits that role is certainly up for debate.
What he undoubtedly has going for him as he begins his new life as United boss is the presence of Steve Holland alongside him as part of a coaching team that also features his former Boro assistant, Jonathan Woodgate.
There is no doubt that the departure of Aaron Danks to Bayern Munich was a major blow that Carrick never quite recovered from on Teesside. That was largely his own fault as he pushed for the appointment of his brother, Graeme, as Danks’ replacement, but Carrick clearly benefited from the presence of an experienced, top-class coach alongside him in the early part of his Boro reign.
Holland, who spent the best part of a decade working alongside Gareth Southgate at England, is regarded as something of a coaching visionary. He should be a major help to Carrick at the training ground.
Ultimately, though, it is the former Boro boss who will be the master of his own fate. Steve Gibson always felt he was sacking a potentially world-class coach when he pulled the trigger on Carrick after a lengthy internal review into the failings of last season. Given the desperate need for improvements at Old Trafford, it will not take long to find out if the Boro chairman was right.