Eight things Michael Carrick must focus on at Manchester United if he takes the job permanently

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Carrick took interim charge of United in January following Ruben Amorim’s exit and two games under Darren Fletcher and recovered their league form dramatically to earn qualification for the Champions League next season. The Athletic reported on Wednesday that the recommendation of the club’s leading football executives to co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe is to make Carrick the club’s permanent head coach and that is expected to pave the way for talks over him staying in charge. Andy Mitten looks at the eight areas Carrick must focus on if he does take over the job permanently to ensure his success as interim continues. This is, by a distance, the most important thing for Carrick and his team. And the hardest to achieve. Carrick has got into the position to be the clear favourite for the United head coach’s job by winning 10 out of 15 league games and taking his team from seventh to third. That seemed improbable in January, but he’s proved people wrong, overseeing wins home or away against Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Villa, Brentford and Chelsea — all the main rivals this season. The dropped points have mostly come against teams lower down: West Ham, Leeds, Newcastle United and Sunderland. Carrick has overachieved with the squad he has, made the best of the players he’s got. Putting them into a 4-2-3-1 system they were used to helped after the Amorim experiment floundered. The expectation among most fans is that this level of wins should be the norm, as it is at most huge clubs. Fans expect United to be in the top four and if they’re not, there will be complaints. Is this reasonable? If United recruit well this summer, then a top-four finish and a run to the Champions League knockout stages is a reasonable expectation. If he falls well short of that and United regress, then pressure will build around Carrick’s perceived lack of top-level experience, but people shouldn’t jump on him. Ruben Amorim was well supported by fans, despite his team finishing 15th. In the summer of 2024, Andreas Georgson and Ruud van Nistelrooy joined United as coaches to assist Erik ten Hag. Both were very highly rated internally and externally. Both moved on, Van Nistelrooy to Leicester, Georgson to Tottenham, when Ruben Amorim got the United job. United felt they had lost two excellent coaches but accepted that a manager chooses those around him. United will be open to adding another coach to Carrick’s staff. Georgson was a set-piece specialist. This is an area where United are likely to look to add. Carrick trusts the coaches around him: the wily Steve Holland, Jonny Evans, Jonathan Woodgate and goalkeeping coach Craig Mawson. But don’t bet against an addition. It’s another huge summer for United. The last one was a positive for recruitment with the arrival of Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo, Benjamin Sesko and Senne Lammens. All get a tick by their name for their good first seasons. It’s hoped that all will improve in their second, too. United want two midfielders, likely three if Manuel Ugarte leaves. These are vital. For all Casemiro’s qualities, too many teams attacked United through the middle and tried to get around him, with varying success. It’s the area of the pitch Carrick knows best. A goalkeeping backup to Lammens is desired, a left-sided player too. And a forward if Joshua Zirkzee exits, as he could. A defensive leader can wait if the current defenders remain. United have money but must use it well, as they did last season. The entire budget could be spent on an Elliot Anderson and that wouldn’t be wise. The club are well prepared going into the window, but this isn’t yet the Manchester United of old, where transfer records are broken. This squad is short of mounting a sustained Premier League bid and that’s not going to be sorted in one window after a season of no European football. Revenues from tickets, sponsorship, commercial and broadcast are all set to increase substantially, but anyone who thinks United will offer the astronomical transfer fees and wages of yore is mistaken. While he may not identify the targets, every player signed will be with Carrick’s approval. Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Rasmus Hojlund, Andre Onana are all the biggest names out on loan. Emerging talents Radek Vitek, Toby Collyer and Harry Amass need to be playing first-team football in a top league or the Championship. Some will be sold, or at least up for sale to get money in. Fortunately, most of the biggest issues will resolve themselves. Rashford’s wages are high, but his stock is higher than a year ago after a successful, title-winning season at Barcelona. Hojlund is contracted to sign for Napoli, having been a success. More income, but still a loss on his transfer fee. Sancho will be out of contract, an extremely costly signing for whom there’s no return, despite him being only 26. Onana had a decent season at Trabzonspor, who finished third in Turkey. There’s a market for these talents, there’s a much smaller one for their high wages. Does Carrick foresee more minutes for one of the returning youngsters? That’s one reason for pre-season. This isn’t all on Carrick, but United need to move men on in a way that they can be considered good deals for the club. That’s the hard bit, since United are not selling from a position of strength with most of the players, more because they’ve not worked out at Old Trafford. Carrick is cool, calm and looks the part in his Manchester United suit. He’s a man of integrity, with multiple testimonies to that. He’s confident in his ability, too. When Sanne Lammens made a rare mistake against Liverpool, Carrick simply said: “These things happen”. And they do. He empowers the other coaches to take responsibility and accountability for coaching certain parts of the game. Carrick backs players in public when they’ve had a bad game because he knows it can come back around, that everyone has an off day. He doesn’t write any player off publicly. To him, he must protect lads he’s got to work with because he knows he might need them all. Carrick’s answers in press conferences could be better, but that’s likely because he’s talking in an interim role. I suspect we’ll see more detail and explanations once his position is permanent, with more of his own opinions, but he’s not going to turn into somebody he isn’t, not someone who bangs his own drum or feeds tabloids a juicy line. “He’s straight, he doesn’t lie,” is what one source who has worked with him told The Athletic. “And that’s a beautiful thing about him.” The football has been good under Carrick. It could be better. And you could have said the same under any manager. Carrick was a coach before a manager and he still coaches. He excels at build-up from the back and gives detail and guidance to players on positioning, opponents. He wants players to be brave, to have the technical ability and the togetherness to play from the back. It’s not just about starting attacks, but being authoritative, being better than the other team. Carrick speaks to his players about angles and connections through patterns of play. In his mind, complex stuff is clear. His ability to talk to players on their level is excellent because he’s spent much of his life on their level. Carrick has a degree of pragmatism. At Middlesbrough, he told people he’d worked with at Manchester United that he’d needed to adapt because the league was different. He still wanted to be possession dominant and stretch the opposition and have a good structure to protect against counterattacks, but he understands the need for variety, that certain matches and conditions don’t need as much information. “I love possessing the ball,” he said in an interview as Middlesbrough manager. “That’s what I do by nature and I love for my teams to be that way too. I see the game as an attempt to possess the ball. Not just for the sake of possessing it — I’m just not that interested in stats themselves. It’s just about feeling you’re in control of the game.” It’ll be a big shift from one game per week, but Carrick handled this when he was Middlesbrough manager and he handled it when he was part of the staff under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and United were playing 60 games per season. He also handled it as a player — most of his football career was him at a club playing 50-60 games, two games per week. He’s been there, but not as United’s head coach. Ruben Amorim asked for full weeks with his players when he arrived. He got this, but the connections between players and the comprehension of his plan didn’t get much better. More football can have other advantages. Gone will be the slow news weeks when everything gets overanalysed because of a lack of games. More potential incidents, more to talk about can be useful. He absolutely has opinions and a fire in his belly; he just doesn’t always choose to show it publicly. Once bitten, twice shy. Carrick is popular with players. He’s not a coach who will dump too much information on them and expect them to go for it. He tells them what’s appropriate and tries to frame it in as simple language as possible. Less is more and he’s comfortable with that. Many managers, including most of the recent Manchester United managers, were not. They wanted to give the players everything, to arm them with all the information. Carrick understands the mental load that a player can take. It’s one reason you’re seeing United players enthusing about him. Those starters get a lot of responsibility. Those who aren’t getting minutes will almost always be annoyed and, while the United dressing room is much improved on two years ago, there are still a couple of complex characters with big egos who need to be managed well. There will be more games and opportunities next season than this. And that’s in part a reward Carrick’s earned by improving United to get the club back into the Champions League. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms