Preamble
Michael Carrick has been dismissed by Manchester United. He departs after a 4-4 draw with Aston Villa at Old Trafford last Sunday that left the team in the Premier League’s bottom three. United twice fought back from two goals down for a late point against Villa, after a dramatic recovery to defeat Roma in the Champions League five days earlier, but that wasn’t enough.
United are third-bottom in the Premier League, a point behind 17th-placed Coventry, and 17th in the Champions League league phase table. His departure follows a review led by the director of football, Jason Wilcox, and a recommendation to Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who controls sporting policy.
More as we get it.
Key events
Joshua Keeling gets in touch: “Here’s my take: Carrick succeeded in the second half of last season off the back of the fitness and tactical work Amorim did with the squad. They were so much fitter under Amorim, and that’s fallen off a cliff this season.
”It’s the right decision to let him go. He’s still a club legend and one of us, and the fans still love him, but it wasn’t working. Pochettino will probably fail as well, given the issues at United. But he gives us a better chance. He’s a club builder, the club just need to equip him to do it.”
Gary Neville has had his say, as you might expect, telling Sky Sports News:
“I think after the Bournemouth game I said at the time that Manchester United effectively watched Michael Carrick resign on the pitch at the end of the game with that lap around, that wave goodbye. I think he was expecting it to come at that point and they were indecisive.
“They obviously felt that they might be able to get to the international break and there could be some sort of pick-up in results, but it’s been a difficult two weeks. Indecision, lack of authority, just basically really poor leadership.
“In the last 24-48 hours it’s been spectacularly bad to be in Monaco as an executive and an owner whilst your manager, who’s a club legend, is taking training on the pitch and simultaneously approaching the US Soccer Federation to approach Mauricio Pochettino.
“It’s just quite simply disgusting. That falls well below the standard of what you would expect in any other business, in any other industry. It would be constructive dismissal and you’d be getting sued.
“The optics of being in Monaco whilst the team, the staff, the people who are running the club on a day-to-day basis are in Manchester, it’s just not good and it reflects badly on the leadership. I don’t think anybody comes out of this well at all.”
Folarin Balogun, the USMNT striker, has been asked about Pochettino: “If it’s something that becomes official, then he will let us know,” Balogun said on a video call from the U.S. camp ahead of the team’s double-header against Haiti.
“If I had a vote,” Balogun added, in reference to Pochettino’s future, “I would like to keep things the way they are.”
Ben Monroe-Lake is back in touch: “After my last email, Manchester’s finest men are back to make more good decisions. Pochettino isn’t going to arrive until just before their match at Liverpool? Fantastic. Genius. Inspired. Is Pochettino the answer? No idea, maybe? He could probably need more than a few days to organise himself in a new ground, in a different country and city for sure though.”
Interesting quote from Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe in 2024: “We’ll decide that [playing] style, plus the CEO, sporting director, probably the recruitment guys; what the style of football is, and that will be the Manchester United style of football, and the coach will have to play that style.
“We’re not going to oscillate from a (Jose) Mourinho style to a (Pep) Guardiola style. That’s not the way we’ll run the club. Otherwise, you’re changing everything all the time; you change your coach, you’ve got the wrong squad — we won’t do that. In modern football, you need to decide what’s your path and stick to your path.”
So, how’s that working out, Jim?
Krishna gets in touch: “Let us look at the upside. Everyone knows what is wrong at OT and everyone agrees that nothing can be done, so we might as well look at some pluses.
“Any red card will be rescinded immediately- this will make the players bold and make them approach the D which is treated as dementors colony right now. Facing Chelsea and Tottenham will be candy. They will get all the juices. Players and fans can take a picture with Poch and have it framed as ‘When I met Russell Crowe’.”
Pochettino managing the USMNT for those two games is very Manchester United 2026. Our estimation in the office is he lands at Ringway Airport on Thursday from Cincinnati, when some of his players will be back from international duty the day before. Darren Fletcher taking training again? Or will Carrick keep turning up?
Pochettino to lead USMNT in next two matches
Pablo Iglesias Maurer
US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino will lead the US through the remainder of the current international window, a source with direct knowledge of US Soccer’s plans told the Guardian on Thursday.
Pochettino has emerged as the leading candidate to replace Michael Carrick, who was sacked as United manager on Thursday. The Guardian previously reported that the framework of a deal had been agreed between Pochettino and United. The Athletic were first to report news of Pochettino’s plans for the upcoming US matches.
The USMNT face Haiti on Saturday and then again on Tuesday in Miami and Cincinnati, respectively, in the quarter-final of the Concacaf Nations League. Pochettino has been leading the US through training at the federation’s headquarters and training facility outside Atlanta since early this week. The Argentine has yet to publicly address his link to Manchester United, though he is scheduled to meet with the press on Friday morning.
There was, of course, another Premier League sacking today.
Sage has been walking a tightrope since the 5-0 thrashing at Brighton last month when it was made clear to the 47-year-old that he must tighten a defence that had conceded the most goals in the Premier League. Some players are thought to have questioned his training methods, although Dean Henderson, the captain, was among those believed to have pledged their support for Sage after defeats by Newcastle and Tottenham.
David Flynn gets in touch: “Hi John, I must say I don’t fully agree that United keep appointing yesterday’s men, they’ve also tried appointing tomorrow’s men (Amorin, Ten Haag) and nobody’s men (Carrick, Ole). It’s actually a broad spectrum of mistakes that they keep making.”
Fair point, well made.
Ben Monroe-Lake gets in touch: “We live in an age of incredibly powerful individuals, people who wield vast amounts of money and influence and increasingly make little attempt to hide how readily they are to fling such influence and money around for their own benefit. Trump, Musk, Huang, Zuckerberg etc.
“And yet at the same time, these people seem entirely unable to not show everyone their arse, on ever more impressive stages, in ever more shocking ways. So the mind trust at Manchester United are a particularly great microcosm of this. Men of a particular age, who voluntarily took up this position, wrested control of the football operations in fact, as they thought they could do it better. Yet it’s obvious how bad they are at this, even without seeing inside their Monaco based boardrooms.
“Extend Ten Hag’s contract based on the performance in one game. Force in a young manager with a rigid tactical plan without the players to support it. Fire the person you paid Newcastle Utd a huge fee to hire, because he points out this is stupid. Keep on the interim manager with little experience and don’t fill the most gaping holes in his squad.
“In between this, fire the tea ladies, make some questionable pronouncements and who can even remember all the gaffes.
“Of course it’s slightly terrifying that people who are essentially “in charge” are so stupid but it’s a little bit mollifying that people that seem happy to wade waist deep into all aspects of our lives are as dumb as I am. All that really separates me from them is luck and being more willing to get up at five in the morning. So perhaps one day someone not a total bozo will make enough money to buy a football club.”
David Wall gets in touch: “One thing that concerns me about Pochettino is how he will engage with the academy. There was a lot made when he was at Spurs about how he favoured young players. But in fact most of those young players were bought in from outside of the club. It was only Kane from their academy who became a regular in the first team (perhaps with Winks, although more as a squad player rather than first choice). Is Pochettino the type of manager who will spend his midweek evenings going to watch the youth sides play, or is he just going to give an instruction about age-profile to the recruitment department?”
Winks started the 2019 Champions League final, as did Kane, rather unfortunately. At Chelsea, there was definite friction with the club hierarchy, though the signs at United are that he could have the personality to create his own powerbase. Within United, there is a great big vacuum that someone needs to fill.
The problem with Pochettino is that he’s very much the face of 2015 rather than 2026, setting aside what was a decent enough USMNT World Cup until it all went wrong. United keep doing this. Louis van Gaal would have been a fine appointment in 1996 rather than 2015, and Jose Mourinho would have been ideal in 2003, rather than 2016. Of course, United had a good manager in those days but times move on.
Joe Taylor gets in touch: “Spurs fan here. I’m a bit confused by the Pochettino-Spurs revisionism. Sometimes managers don’t get credit for taking players that until that point hasn’t achieved anything and turning them into world beaters (eg. Eriksen, Son) but in this case he doesn’t even get credit for players that didn’t do anything before or after his tenure (eg. Dier, Dele Alli, Dembele, Lamela). I’d suggest he had quite a large hand in that squad that supposedly made his life easy. I think he’s perfect for United right now.”
I’d agree. He made the most of what he had, and a player of a couple of players who have achieved very little without his help. There’s a few projects to work on at United.
Warning: Poch may not be an instant cure for the Manchester United malaise.
At Chelsea, just one win from his first six league games, same at Southampton and Espanyol, while at Tottenham he won two and drew two. At PSG, he won four of his first six games, which at that club is probably below par.
The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) earlier issued a statement following Carrick’s dismissal pinning the blame for poor results firmly on the ownership. In full below:
Michael Carrick’s departure marks another depressing moment for Manchester United. We thank him for his service and for restoring hope during the second half of last season. His standing among supporters remains undiminished.
The reason Manchester United fans have continued to support Michael Carrick in recent weeks is that they know that responsibility for United’s problems do not primarily rest with him or indeed his predecessors as manager.
They lie with the ownership.
The Glazers’ debt-funded takeover continues to burden the club. When INEOS came in they promised sporting excellence, but yet with repeated changes in football leadership we have seen anything but.
It is time for the owners to explain themselves and show some accountability.
But the discontent at United is not just about matters on the pitch. Far from it.
Aggressive ticketing policies have further damaged relations with supporters. Treating loyal fans principally as a source of revenue undermines their identity and the bond with the team that sustains support through difficult times. Supporters are being asked to pay the price for the owners’ mismanagement as well as their stadium ambitions through higher charges and diminished rights.
The earlier Stretford End banner declaring “The way you treat us is a disgrace” was a warning. The unprecedented scale of the booing at Old Trafford, alongside public criticism from senior players in recent weeks, now points to a deeper deterioration. These are signs of a club becoming more divided, with the bond between supporters, players and those running Manchester United under increasing strain.
MUST warned publicly in January 2025 that alienating supporters risked a downward spiral of worsening atmosphere, performances and financial outcomes. Our subsequent Telegraph article urged Sir Jim Ratcliffe to break that “doom loop” by bringing supporters with him. Those warnings remain painfully relevant.
The owners must allow senior club management to change direction: show accountability, rebuild trust, listen to supporters and recognise that their loyalty is fundamental to football success. Another change of head coach cannot repair what the ownership continues to undermine.
The pattern is repeated, the problems remain the same. Wrote this a couple of weeks ago.
Beyond Busby and Ferguson, each United manager who also served felt the lash of desperation of a falling giant. Each of their defenestrations has featured an infighting that would not have been out of place in ancient Rome. Favouritism, nepotism, self-interest, entitlement, complacency and sentimentality have been the betrayal of a legend, to use the title of Michael Crick’s and David Smith’s “j’accuse” book from 1989. Living with the legend and influence of those two managers leads the list of difficulties.
United fans know such history too well. “You lousy bastards, you let him down,” Brian Kidd told teammates when the bullet came for Wilf McGuinness, Busby’s immediate successor, in December 1970. Busby himself had done the deed. A December 1972 meeting at Selhurst Park with Tommy Docherty as Crystal Palace beat United 5-0 hastened the end for Frank O’Farrell.
Good afternoon, well here we are again.
And with that I shall hand over to John Brewin for the afternoon session.
An email! “I’m a lifelong Spurs fan and enjoyed having Poch as manager,” writes Alan. “But he did have a squad that made his life pretty easy. By the start of his second season, 2015-16, he could field this side: Lloris; Walker, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose; Eriksen, Dier, Dembele; Dele Alli, Kane, Son. Not sure how many of the current United squad would get into that team. Sadly most of them would also get into the current Spurs team!”
The timing of Pochettino’s expected arrival will be interesting. The US men’s side have a Concacaf Nations League game against Haiti in Kingston, Jamaica, on Saturday, with the return leg next Wednesday in Cincinnati. Manchester United travel to Anfield in the Premier League four days later.
The nitty gritty of that is surely forming part of the conversations ongoing now. Either way, US Soccer will be quids-in as Jeff Rueter explains here.
The real boon is his release clause, a reported $10m (£7.5m) option that only a Big Club could afford to spring. Had Pochettino left after the World Cup, coach and federation would have parted with nothing more exchanged than a handshake and some pleasantries. Instead, they forged an insurance policy to make up for what could have been if Pochettino had stayed for a full cycle.
A few comments from below the line on our news story.
Impossible job and yet he still finished third.
This is the weakest squad Utd have had in 40 years. That’s not Michael’s fault.
He can walk either his head held high.
The fish rots from the head and it’s spread right thru the Utd body.
Michael got caught up in it, bloody useless players in the main.
Pochettino flatters to decieve, won nothing at Tottenham, PSG are better under Luis Enrique and USA much of a muchness, it’ll be another round of we made mistakes yet again at United inside 18 months. And Carrick was treated appallingly by the hierarchy, Relegation would be just desserts.
Thank you Michael. Your conduct was exemplary.
Once it became known that WIlcox leads a review, it was clear he would recommend Ratcliffe to fire Carrick. Otherwise he would be to blamed himself. How come the club that was 3rd last year is 3rd from bottom this year, with the same coach? The obvious answer is that recruitment failed. Wilcox can’t have that, so better blame coach.
I think one of the problems of United and hierarchy is that they are opportunistic in their managerial appointments. Not only they don’t have a long-term strategy, they don’t even have a short-term strategy and fire coaches when other options they identify previously become available. They fired van Gaal because they contacted Mourinho, they pursued Amorim, now they fire Carrick when they are able to get a deal with Pochettino.
Do yourself a favour and read Barney Ronay’s piece on Poch’s imminent arrival. These lines feel particularly apt:
How do you solve a club that has won two major trophies in 10 years of steady downward progress? Easy. You hire a coach who has also won two major trophies in 13 years of steady downward progress. How do we get back to the dimly remembered recent past? We hire the dimly remembered recent past.
Does this feel like a magic bullet? At this stage hiring Pochettino is like booking the bloke who did Gangnam Style to play the Super Bowl. Yeah, huge fan. Remind me. Weren’t you quite big in 2013?
What next for Michael Carrick is also an interesting question. Has he done enough to put himself in contention for the next Premier League vacancy that comes up? Or is it back to the Championship, where his tenure with Middlesbrough was mixed to say the least? With Regis Le Bris and Matthias Jaissle probably looking the least secure in the top flight at the moment, might a return to the north east be on the cards at some point for the Wallsend-born man? Doesn’t feel quite right, does it? But you never know.
Hello all. Perhaps the most immediate problem facing Mauricio Pochettino when he arrives will be playing personnel. It’s painfully obvious – and is has been for years – that where once Manchester United was home for the best of the best, these days it’s … not. Everyone has their own view on players but when you look at the teamsheets for the key recent games against Aston Villa, Chelsea and, yes, Bournemouth you’d be hard-pressed to suggest that United had a truly superior 20-man matchday squad for those games. And Pochettino isn’t going to be able to fix that overnight.
John Ashdown is here to take the blogging reins.
Max Rushden
You have to credit Manchester United. Your local rivals have turned the Premier League into an almost meaningless farce. We are questioning the validity of anything we’ve seen over the past 20 years; wondering how many goals Erling Haaland will get in the Championship. We are looking at the league table from second position down and wishing we’d invested in inflatable bananas a month ago.
And yet here comes the Old Trafford machine: from players to the captain to the manager to the director of football, to the director of the director of football, to a minority owner who feels the UK is being “colonised by immigrants”, to debt-leveraging majority owners who take vast sums out of the club and are collectively saying hold my Ineos-sponsored high-performance wellness immune boost smoothie.
Yes, it’s time to dust down the Manchester United bin-fire article. Read this and compare and contrast. From 11 August 2022: “Reds rinse and repeat: will we ever break the Manchester United crisis cycle?” There are others.
“Yes, it’s time to dust down the Manchester United bin-fire article,” as Max Rushden wrote recently. Another piece that’s well worth revisiting …
Here’s a data graphic on how Manchester United, under Carrick, went from good last season to bad this season.
“Michael Carrick has been at the helm during the Red Devils’ first dip into the relegation zone since 1986 yet somehow is also definitely not at fault. There is almost total agreement on the latter point, that United’s issues are structural and systemic and absolve Carrick of blame. Still, he’s gotta go, because what can you do, eh?”
“Pochettino who built something at Tottenham despite the environment,” Daniel writes of the Argentinian in that piece below “… the sense is that, as when Mourinho arrived at Old Trafford after years of speculation, he’s past his magical best.”
Daniel Harris
In January 2014 the 13th series of Celebrity Big Brother aired in the UK, the show so popular that its run time was extended by five days before a public vote anointed Jim Davidson the winner. Then, two years later when Brexit happened, people wondered where their tolerant country had gone, lamenting the ephemeral spirit of London 2012 as though the 2011 riots were some kind of fever dream, not a desperate response to decades of structural and institutional racism exacerbated by the cruelty of unnecessary austerity.
The truth is that if security is quickly upended, it was built on quicksand to begin with. Which brings us to Manchester United, easing effortlessly from an uplifting third-place finish to some of the worst football in their history.
It is entirely possible that Alex Ferguson made a deal with the devil to the effect that United would be great until he retired and hilariously dreadful thereafter. But assuming not, his l’état, c’est moi mentality was busy setting up the post-him fall even at the height of the success – itself a consequence of what had gone before.
