A little bit of a dip in form and a home defeat to Leeds United have started raising extremely familiar questions at Old Trafford.
The fixation on the hair-pulling afterwards was inevitable, given the paucity of their overall performance. Better to micro-focus on one decision that didn’t go your way than the broader picture, if the broader picture is not particularly flattering.
The key takeaway from Manchester United’s first home league defeat to Leeds United since February 1981 should be that, at a time when they really needed one, Leeds pulled out an excellent performance to just about secure their Premier League status, but modern football media doesn’t quite work like that, does it?
Unexpected Delirium is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
None of this is to say that this particular incident doesn’t warrant a little further attention. Hair-pulling is specifically listed as violent conduct in the laws of the game. There’s no question whatsoever that it was a red card offence. But in spite of this pretty overwhelming evidence, a space has to be made to feel aggrieved, because in a world that doesn’t show accountability for anything, there’s always an excuse to be made for the bad decisions that your own players have made.
It’s reasonable to say that Michael Carrick has had a successful time of things as the manager of Manchester United since being appointed into the position in January. United are third in the Premier League and apparently headed for a return to the Champions League for the first time since 2023. This is a clear improvement on the Ruben Amorim, which ended with successive draws against Wolves and Leeds. Indeed, Amorim was sackedafter drawing 1-1 at Elland Road on the 4th January.
But as the end of the season starts to draw close, United have started to struggle a little more. Defeat against Leeds means that they’ve only won one of their last four matches, and as can be seen from the reaction to losing this one match, it doesn’t take long around Old Trafford for tempers to start to rise again.
The point will soon arriving at which Manchester United have to make a decision over Michael Carrick. When taken on in the first place, few expected him to be anything like a success there, given the way in which his time at Middlesbrough ground to a halt, and there remains that fundamental element of arrogance to the club’s support which expects A Big Name to be the Manchester United manager.
The one exception to this rule is in the case of former playing legends. At the start of January, Manchester United were clearly not going to get the sort of elite-level coach to whom they feel perpetually entitled, and Carrick was an obvious choice. With well over 450 appearances over 11 seasons, he had some degree of managerial experience, in the form of three seasons of increasingly diminishing returns at Middlesbrough, and he was available in the first week of the new year.
And his record since his Old Trafford return has been good. Prior to their 2-1 defeat at Newcastle at the start of March - his first league defeat as their manager - they’d won six of their previous seven matches. They beat Manchester City comfortably at Old Trafford and beat Arsenal away. They’re three places higher in the Premier League than they were when he was appointed.
But Carrick has been playing on easy mode, this season. Without the pressures brought about by European football and having been knocked out of the League Cup by Grimsby Town in September, all he’s had to cope with this season has been the Premier League and the FA Cup, and the FA Cup run didn’t go so well, ending with a home defeat to Brighton in his second game in charge. With such early exits from the domestic cups, this season has brought just 40 competitive games for Manchester United, their lowest total since the 1914-15 season.
Things won’t be that easy again, next time around. Either the Champions or Europa Leagues - and they should still be a shoo-in for a Champions League place, with seven points between themselves and sixth-placed Chelsea, who are currently atrophying to a far greater degree than them - will bring a minimum of eight extra midweek matches, while it’s unlikely that first round exits in the domestic cups will be brushed off as lightly again.
The hyper-reactive nature of football discourse these days means that United's recent dip is having an effect after just a handful of matches. That unbeaten previous couple of months seems to have already been written off by some as an extended period of new manager bounce or dismissed because of a perception that performances didn't match results.
The fundamentally unhappy nature of the world these days means that getting the team from 15th to 3rd place in the Premier League in the space of one season isn’t regarded as enormous progress any more. Instead, it’s treated as, at best, a stepping stone on the way to sunlit uplands which can only be reached with the arrival of Alex Ferguson Version 2.0.
And perhaps this is the route of the problem for Manchester United. It’s not that these svengali-esque managers no longer exist. It's more that Manchester United have failed to find one, while their bitterest rivals all did. Manchester City’s financial heft attracted Pep Guardiola, Liverpool’s attracted Juergen Klopp, and there’s a possibility that Arsenal might have found theirs in the form of Mikel Arteta.
But United have spent more than a decade since Ferguson’s retirement jumping from pillar to post, from celebrity mega-manager to bright, sophisticated continental young thing to former club legend without managing to recreate that elusive Fergie elixir. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that perhaps all that silverware was an elongated flash in the pan rather than the years that have followed it.
And while a manager can make a huge difference, in the modern era the game requires more than just this one figure. While Michael Carrick may stay or may go, Jason Wilcox remains the director of football and Omar Berrada remains the CEO. Neither have overseen any improvement of substance, but both remain in their positions and under comparatively little scrutiny over their own competence.
The marketplace will be unbelievably hectic, this summer. Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle may also be looking for new head coaches or managers, and that may only be scraping the surface. Throw a World Cup into the equation, and it could be a chaotic summer in the managerial transfer market.
The previous history of Manchester United suggests that Champions League qualification may be enough for the club to make his interim period permanent in the summer. He’s cheap, he’s available, and evena profit of £33 million on the last financial year doesn’t negate the fact that the club’s total debt is £1.3 billion, with a lack of European football likely to negatively impact their position and nothing bar some drawings having been produced, regarding the redevelopment of Old Trafford.
With a seven-point buffer between themselves and the indignity of having to play in the Europa League next season and six games to play, Manchester United willprobably be back in the Champions League next season. Perhaps that will begin a snowball effect that will recover the club’s financial position and get them back on track to actually be the club that they still presume themselves to be.
The opportunity is there. One of the key characteristics of the Premier League over the last couple of seasons has been that everybody is flawed, and this creates a window for clubs to fix what’s wrong with them and gain a critical advantage over their rivals. The signs on this front from the Leeds United match were not particularly encouraging.
Unexpected Delirium is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.