Photo by Michael Regan - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images
Photo by Michael Regan - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images
Michael Carrick has seen a lot of flak come his way after Man Utd’s start to the season, but he thinks the biggest criticism is actually their main strength.
The pre-season vibes and the interim spell credit from last season have firmly been run through by Michael Carrick in rapid fashion, much earlier than anyone expected.
Elimination from the Carabao Cup was the recent disaster, and the Man Utd of last season under Carrick has completely disappeared.
A familiar criticism is being thrown at Carrick as a result, but he insists that it’s intentional, and actually their biggest strength.
Michael Carrick brushes off “identity” debate Man Utd
There are a lot of Man Utd fans who think that Carrick is basically Ole Gunnar Solskjaer 2.0, in the sense that he got the results he did last season by relaxing the atmosphere.
The doubts came when the team started losing. Did Solskjaer get those results simply due to “good vibes”? Was he a capable tactician or was he just a good man-manager?
Now that Carrick is also in a slump, the same questions are being asked of him. Does he have a style of play? What is his philosophy? What is the work being done on the training ground?
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Those might be valid questions around a manager whose only previous permanent spell was at Middlesbrough, but Carrick insists that not having a recognisable identity is by design.
He said [via Sky Sports]: “For me, I quite like the fact that someone can’t work out our identity! That means you’re unpredictable. From an attacking sense, we want to be that. We don’t want opponents to read what we’ll do next. If we can do a good number of things well, I’d rather have a team that does that. We’ve attacked well since January. That’s good.”
Carrick’s argument is solid for now because United have scored a lot of goals since he arrived in January, but it can’t paper over recent cracks.
The reality is that this team is comfortable playing in space, but looks short of ideas when asked to break down defensive blocks. That comes with patterns of play and understanding each other’s runs off the ball.
Being unpredictable is not the same as looking clueless, because so far, not even Man Utd’s players look like they know what they want to do in the final third. When that’s the case, it’s natural for the opponents not to know either.
But United are scarily easy to nullify with a resolute defensive shape, so they are unpredictable in the most predictable way, rather than in a genius way where the opponent doesn’t know what’s coming.