Decision paralysis is keeping Michael Carrick and Renée Slegers in a job, but it’s only a matter of time until that changes
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When Matheus Cunha scored Manchester United’s third goal on Tuesday night, it was the reaction of three TV pundits next to Michael Carrick that were the most enthusiastic. Nicky Butt, Wayne Rooney and Ashley Young were on their feet, giddy at the comeback. Carrick looked down before raising one finger in the air.
It was a remarkable turnaround. His United team had come back from a two-goal deficit, and an abject first-half performance, to break a nine-game streak without a win. It earned him some much-needed breathing room, although the consensus earlier in the week was that he was always going to be given until the international break.
“This place does magical things,” Carrick said afterwards, in reference to Old Trafford. “It’s done it before and it’ll do it over and over again at some point in the future.”
On Sunday lunchtime, Renée Slegers must have wished that she could go back to her own false dawn the weekend before, when her Arsenal side came from a goal down against Tottenham to win the North London derby 2-1. That result came after a spell in which the Gunners had won only once in six league games, making their worst start to a Women’s Super League campaign since 2014. Incidentally, United’s top-flight start is their worst since 1986-87.
A 3-0 midweek win against Benfica in the Women’s Champions League was another boost, but now Slegers was watching Arsenal draw 1-1 with Aston Villa, who sit ninth ahead of this weekend’s matches. They are still yet to win at the Emirates this season. “It feels like we’re playing the same game over and over again,” she said.
This is managerial purgatory. Everyone knows that for Carrick and Slegers, it is a case of when, not if they are sacked. Yet each week they remain on the touchline, looking moody, unsettled, watching on as their teams are not very good at football.
There were big celebrations at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Leah Williamson charged across the pitch towards the away fans at full-time, fist in the air. There was the same delirious energy, fuelled by relief, as Cunha leapt into the crowd at Old Trafford, shirtless and soon to be sent off.
It was hard to begrudge the emotion in either celebration. These were wins, and both teams are way beyond caring how they get them. When results are this bad, you simply glaze over winning the soft penalty and then getting a retake after it is saved due to encroachment. Or in Arsenal’s case, being generously awarded a penalty based on an old interpretation of the handball law. If all that matters is the win, the gaping holes in defence, the ineffective press, or an inability to generate good chances can all be safely ignored.
We have become conditioned to the quick managerial sacking. This has prompted a reactive school of thought: that football clubs are too quick to remove managers from their positions. Mikel Arteta and Andoni Iraola are patron saints of this kind of survivorship bias. There is no doubt that this can be the case, but at Arsenal and United, that these managers are both still in their roles is not proof of a commitment to their vision. It is a form of decision paralysis.
United fans have vocally supported Carrick over the past couple of weeks, choosing to boo the players and cheer their former captain. It is a noble pursuit, and they are right to be fed up with the way the club has been run over the past two decades. The majority of their ire is deservedly focused on the club’s owners: the Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Indeed, part of the logic behind why sacking managers often does not improve clubs is because most of the time, the rot goes a lot deeper. This is undeniably the case at United.
While Slegers’ popularity rating probably is lower with Arsenal fans, there is still a recognition that she led them to a Champions League triumph only last year. There has been no “Slegers Out” graffiti on Hornsey Road, unlike for her predecessor Jonas Eidevall. Instead, “Wheatley Out” stickers have begun appearing in pubs around the Emirates, a reference to director of women’s football Clare Wheatley, on whom much of the blame for this season is being pinned, as well as the club’s broader failure to win a league title since 2019.
Carrick and Slegers’ personalities also promote a more affectionate attitude. Both have in their poor runs chosen to start press conferences with their own personal messages, where they acknowledged their team’s form and spoke of their love for the clubs that they coach. It is far removed from the spiky attitude that Ruben Amorim and Eidevall adopted in hard moments.
The self-importance of football hierarchies seems to increase only with their lack of accountability. A managerial sacking is another decision they are forced to take, another moment where it is obvious that there is no grand plan. While Carrick and Slegers stay in role, they get to be the fall guys who never actually take the fall. At Arsenal, the malaise was so strong that Eidevall had to resign to get out of the job. They then spent months um-ing and ah-ing over whether to give Slegers the job full-time while she held the interim role.
The hope is that something will genuinely turn around, but watching these teams play, it is hard to see anything to suggest that the spark is actually there. Slegers appears to be just throwing on different combinations of players in the hope that one version will click, a kind of musical chairs for professional footballers. For Carrick, the worrying parallel took place closer to home. Ole Gunnar Solskjær looked to have salvaged some more time when his United team came from two goals down against Atalanta to win 3-2. But a 5-0 defeat to Liverpool followed. After a last-gasp draw with Atalanta in the reverse fixture, then a loss to Manchester City, they went to Watford and lost 4-1. He was sacked the next day.