For a window into the alarming dysfunction at Manchester United that Michael Carrick failed to manage and caused his sacking, consider the case of Eddie Howe, initially a favourite to succeed the 45-year-old before Mauricio Pochettino’s emergence as the chosen one. The former Newcastle manager had been Jason Wilcox’s choice to take over from Carrick. Howe was also the favoured candidate of Dan Ashworth, Wilcox’s predecessor as United’s director of football, to follow Erik ten Hag after the Dutchman’s sacking in October 2024.
Except Wilcox disagreed and Sir Jim Ratcliffe went with Wilcox’s man, Ruben Amorim, and that December Ashworth departed only five months after joining. At that juncture Wilcox was the technical director. Now he is United’s highest-ranking football executive, the powerbroker.
He was able, apparently with a straight face, to recommend to Ratcliffe that Howe, nearly two years after he rejected him, should become United’s eighth permanent No 1 in the 13 and a half years since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. If following this is difficult, making sense of it is near impossible. Should London’s West End need a new farce then look no further than the wacky world of Ratcliffe and the football department he leads, which is also headed up by Omar Berrada, the chief executive, and is proving a disjointed, illogical operation.
Yet if this meant Carrick was dealt a treacherous hand, it is also true that he should have played it better. This, after all, is the job of a football coach: to somehow make wine from water – even if the water is murky, and may need purifying first. José Mourinho, one of Carrick’s predecessors, from May 2016 to December 2018, showed how – to a degree.
Mourinho stated famously that leading United to second place in 2017-18 (with 81 points, 19 behind Manchester City) was one of his finest achievements. This from a serial winner who broke the United-Arsenal duopoly of the Premier League to take Chelsea to consecutive crowns (2004-05 and 2005-06), and made history in Italy by guiding Inter to the treble in 2009-10. Mourinho’s billing of that second place was down to having to negotiate a similar shambles, overseen by Ed Woodward, the then executive vice-chair.
The Portuguese’s opening campaign ended with the Carabao Cup and Europa League collected despite, like Carrick, having to deal with a hierarchy convinced that it knew better than the man it hired as the football expert. Here we arrive at a fundamental quality Carrick lacked: an ability to be streetwise when really required. For an example of Mourinho’s nous, rewind to a pre-season tour of America when this correspondent was offered an off-the-record sounding about a player he wanted out of the club but the executive did not.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
