The death loop of managers rolled on in Old Trafford. The latest victim is Michael Carrick, whose inevitable ouster is a metaphor of the crumbling club’s anarchic administration rather than the manager’s incompetence.
The miserable numbers of Carrick’s troops expedited the marching orders. A solitary win in eleven league games, the club’s worst start in the Premier League era, cannot go without backlash. But as with most of the seven full-time managers the club had hired to resurrect its long departed glory, this was not so much a failure of the manager’s tactics as a miserable proof of the malaise that has swallowed the club in 13 years since Sir Alex Ferguson departed. The proverbial camel’s back was broken long ago.
Maybe, the Ferguson era was just the Noah Ark’s that masked the filth the club had drowned itself in. Glazers, the majority owners, have little emotional attachment to the historic club. The family didn’t buy the club out of love or loyalty, but as a high-profit business commodity. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, part-owner and who now handles the sporting side, came with the self-hyped image of the messiah, only to ruthlessly fire staff, strip their benefits, spike ticket prices, and scrap traditions, estranging himself from the fans, killing the soul of the club. At all levels, clarity and compassion have existed as only illusions. The handling of Carrick’s sacking was cruelly unprofessional and soulless. He continued training at the club’s Carrington campus, while the management was busy negotiating a deal with Mauricio Pochettino, expected to appointed to the hot seat next.
We can confirm Michael Carrick has departed his role as men’s first-team head coach.
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) November 12, 2026
It is less of a community institution it has always felt proud about, but more of a royal corporate mess. So much so that he has found his way to the protest flags and banners in the stands. His appointments, chief executive Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox, have shown little accountability in the club’s episodic crisis. With baffling detachment, they have dodged from biting the bullet. Ratcliffe wants to fix the leaking roof, but there is a crumbling floor beneath his feet. None of them can exist in denial.
Not that the decay was sudden; or the former managers and players had nor intimated the owners about the state of rot. Cristiano Ronaldo was shocked to see that the training facilities remained as when he departed in 2009. Interim manager Ralf Ragnick recommended open-heart surgery. Carrick’s predecessor Ruben Amorim said the club “should be ready to suffer” before they become a force again. Erik Ten Hag blasted the “toxic work culture”; Ole Gunnar Solskjaer lamented the management’s broken promises. No one listened. No one bothered. As flies to wanton owners the managers were. They sacked them for a sport.
The boardroom was either at odds with the managers’ vision or forsake them impatiently. Spendings were wanton. An astonishing 2.4 billion pounds has been coughed for players in the post-Fergie era, with little tangible progress. Severance packages have cost them an estimated 100 million pounds. Young footballers wither into oblivion.
It’s into the shambles that Mauricio Pochettino, or whoever gets appointed next, walks in. Into a broken club, with a reeling structure and decomposing soul. For Pochettino the task to restore the lost glory, which now only exists in the game’s anthem, could make or break him. Either the death loop crushes him, or he becomes an immortal. It’s the club’s history. The story of the club’s successful eras is the story of two great managers, Matt Busby and Alex Ferguson, both with an all-encompassing force of personality. The rest are archival fodder, not a memory.
The burdens would be many. The history and legacy, the immediate past, the present crisis and the promise of a future. The assessments would be immediate. The players would be the same, unless there is a massive overhaul in the January transfer window. But the players on the market would largely be stopgaps or discards. Premium players would cost a fortune. He can’t expect United’s transfer strategists to suddenly discover wisdom and intuition that they did not show in the summer window. The FFP rules would kick in, leaving the club with little muscle to flex.
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Fundamentally, Pochettino would have to wage his battles with a brittle backline. The lone specialist left-back, Luke Shaw, is injured, as he had been for most of his decade-long career at Old Trafford. He and the Argentine manager go back to Southampton. One half of the first-choice centre-back pair, Lisandro Martinez, is short tempered; the other, Harry Maguire, is ponderous and mistake-prone, although defiant and tenacious. One right back, Noussair Mazraoui, is defensively reliable, but offers little progressive thrusts. The other, Diogo Dalot, is antithesis. The two 20-year-old centre-backs, Ayden Heaven and Leny Yoru, are yet not finished products.
Pochettino backers would fish out his impressive track record of polishing diamonds in the rough. The midfield composition would not excite him either. All his good teams had strong runners that suited his high pressing game. His extreme obsession with fitness and training can leave a bunch of over-indulged footballers knackered, in mind and body.
But for an ambitious manager searching for the job that defines his career, United is a seductive project. Pochettino could leave the club old and content as an era-defining manager, or be dragged into the vicious death loop.
