Under Michael Carrick, Manchester United have been the best team in the Premier League. Which is making things really rather awkward for some.
Carrick has backed United into a corner they did not anticipate. When the ex-midfielder was appointed as interim manager in January, there was little realistic expectation that he would transform the Red Devils’ fortunes – certainly to this extent.
Had things gone roughly as United – and, let’s be honest, us and everyone else – expected, it would have been easy to thank Carrick for keeping the seat warm before the appointment of a big-name manager to oversee whatever the next cycle has in store.
But, nearly four months on, the landscape looks very different.
Carrick has qualified for the Champions League with three games to spare, winning 10 of his 14 matches, beating the other five members of the Big Six as well as Aston Villa amid a 17-point swing between United and the Villans.
MORE: Man Utd the best in Premier League by some distance under Michael Carrick
Not only could Carrick have done no more to glow up his own CV, but none of the big names seem all that keen on following him. All of which makes for some logic-defying mental gymnastics from those refusing to tweak their thinking despite the shift in context.
We can tolerate those who maintain the view that Carrick lacks experience at the very highest level; that’s almost indisputable. But every manager has earned the right to be trusted somewhere, the majority in less pressurised situations than Manchester United.
Where we tend to stop listening is when people say Carrick ‘lacks the charisma’ to be United boss. Or when Troy Deeney starts talking.
Deeney felt Carrick did not deserve the job when he was made interim boss, and the ex-Watford striker is struggling to let it lie.
“You want to give him the credit he deserves,” Deeney said on Monday in his role as CBS Sports pundit, seemingly fighting that urge with all his might.
“I still don’t know what their style of play is. Are they aggressive, front-footed type of team? Are they a low-block, sit-back type… I don’t know because each week they are changing.”
That’s still being viewed as a bad thing, is it?
Ruben Amorim killed stone dead the fanciful notion of a philosophy coach at Manchester United. And everywhere else, managers who refuse to adapt their principles to any given situation are going out of fashion as fast as they came in.
Frankly, it is a wonder they lasted so long. But there is a reason they are popular in the mainstream. Yes, teams managed by such managers are easy to play against but their predictability also makes them easy for pundits and fans to pigeon-hole them.
So teams flip-flop between philosophies while ex-pros make an easy living from panning one and calling for a change to another, rather than identifying nuances week by week.
That Deeney can’t pin a particular label on Carrick is an endorsement.
“Michael comes in, strips it back to basics, goes very simple in terms of putting the best players in their best positions.”
Sounds an awful lot like good management, that.
But it also highlights Carrick’s pragmatism. This is less his team than Amorim’s but he’s getting over a point per game more out of them. Granted, Amorim so stubbornly made the job of following him all too easy, but the shift Carrick has prompted is more than it is possible to achieve simply by not being the previous fella.
Under Carrick, United have not been perfect. But they have been better than Deeney remembered while slating the Red Devils for not hammering an understrength Liverpool.
“Their performances have not been great. They had a good performance against Arsenal, they had a good performance against City, but they haven’t had a solid performance where you go ‘oh!’.”
They have certainly been good enough to enhance Carrick’s credentials, all the while making it glaringly obvious where they must improve in the summer.
If Carrick gets any input on how United do that – specifically in midfield – then maybe in a year, we can judge him through the harsh lens that some want to use when he’s actually mending and making do while getting better results than literally anyone else.
Certainly in the absence of the type of candidate United initially hoped would emerge, Carrick’s achievements and character make him the best man for the job.
Which is no guarantee he will prove to be a success in the long run. Every managerial appointment is a risk to varying degrees, hence the ridiculous turnover at every level of the game, and no coach would guarantee success. Bur right now Carrick is the safest bet.