From 15th to third: Michael Carrick has earned the Manchester United job, but the real test starts now
Twelve months ago Manchester United finished 15th, the worst league season in their modern history, and the club felt closer to a crisis than a comeback. They have just finished third and are back in the Champions League. Michael Carrick has the job permanently, a two-year deal in his pocket, and a level of goodwill around Old Trafford that nobody there has enjoyed in a long time. Here is the awkward part nobody wants to say out loud: the hard bit has not started yet.
What Carrick actually did
Give the man his due, because the turnaround was real. Carrick took over as interim in January, with Ruben Amorim gone and United sitting seventh, and won 11 of his 16 games. The run included wins over Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, the kind of fixtures United had spent two seasons being bullied in. Third place was sealed with a game to spare after a 3-2 win over Nottingham Forest. For a squad that looked broken in autumn, that is a genuine piece of management.
It also earned him the permanent role on merit rather than as a cheap internal option, which is not nothing at a club that has handed out big jobs on reputation for over a decade. Carrick steadied a dressing room, got results out of players who had stopped producing them, and did it without a transfer window of his own. The board rewarded him, and on the evidence of the past few months they were right to.
Why third can be a trap
Here is what gives me pause. A 16-game surge by an interim manager is the easiest kind of football to produce and the hardest to repeat. Players run harder for a new voice. Pressure lifts when expectations collapse. Third place off the back of that is a fine result, but it is not the same as building a team that finishes third every year, and United have spent a fortune in the past confusing one for the other.
The fixtures get heavier now. Champions League football means a bigger squad, more rotation, and opponents who actually plan for you. Carrick will be judged not on whether he can lift a slumping group, which he has proven he can, but on whether he can manage a club that expects to win when it is the favourite. Those are different jobs.
The summer decides everything
This is where the rebuild gets real, and it starts in midfield. Casemiro is off when his contract expires, the engine room has needed surgery for two seasons, and Carrick has already told the recruitment staff there is, in his words, work to do. United have been linked with several midfielders, and getting that one area right matters more than any marquee name elsewhere on the pitch.
I want to believe this is the start of something rather than a good few months stretched too thin. Carrick has bought himself the right to be backed, and a third-place finish with a squad this flawed suggests there is a coach in there. But United have been here before, mistaking a bounce for a foundation. If the club hands him the midfield he needs and the patience the project deserves, this could be the corner everyone has waited years to turn. If it treats third as the destination rather than the floor, next May will feel very familiar.
Cricket Updates
