Seven Matches, Two Wins: Carrick's Manchester United Are Repeating Last Season's Mistakes

In the 84th minute at Craven Cottage, the ball was pushed out to the right touchline. Manchester United's full-back had pushed high since the 70th minute, the midfield no longer had anyone covering, and the space behind opened up to exactly the distance an opposition midfielder needed to receive and turn. There was no goal from that moment. But something else stood out more: the way the red shirts moved in the final ten minutes against Fulham was identical to the way they moved in the first half of their third match of the season. The same gaps between the lines, the same delay in the pressing phase, the same dependence on an individual moment to unlock the game.

I rewatched the footage twice, not to find who made the mistake, but to count how many passages United organised without someone dribbling past two men. When I finished counting, I closed my laptop. Seven matches this season, two wins. In the Premier League, exactly one win, on 30 August against Ipswich Town, alongside two defeats and two draws, the latest coming on Saturday against Fulham. There was a convincing 4-0 win in the Champions League, but Sabah Baku are hardly the yardstick for any conclusion.

The Carrick effect is over. And it ended the way any analyst would recognise: not through a collapse, but through repetition.

Five points from five matches, and one unhappy division

Back in league action, five points from five matches is the Red Devils' worst start since the Premier League began. One point per game. Extrapolated across a season, that pace lands at 38 points — a zone usually discussed in terms of relegation rather than the top four. Linear extrapolation from five rounds is a lazy calculation, and a team's form chart never travels in a straight line. But it is enough to show the problem does not sit in any single match.

Carrick signed a deal until 2028 in the summer, with an option until 2029, after leading the team into the Champions League. That is a contract given to a man handed long-term trust, and it is also the contract that makes him the first to bear responsibility when results go wrong. At Friday's press conference he called the sack rumours ridiculous. I understand that reaction. A man who won everything under Ferguson as a player, then impressed as a coach at Middlesbrough, has every right to feel hard done by. But pressure at Old Trafford does not operate on the logic of fairness. It operates on the logic of the table.

What caught my attention was not what Carrick said, but what his team did on the pitch. Seven matches, two wins, and both came in games where the opponent voluntarily conceded territory. This team has not won a single match from behind. That is the mark of a system without a Plan B, not of a system suffering bad luck.

150 million pounds, and a squad still incomplete

In these situations the manager is the first to bear responsibility, but he cannot be the only one. The squad has been poorly built, and in some areas there are no alternatives to the starters.

United spent a total of 150 million pounds in the summer window on Tielemans, Santos and Baleba, although the latter has not yet been seen because of an ankle problem. Put that figure on the scales. Tottenham spent 315 million. Chelsea spent 348 million. Manchester City spent 451 million. Liverpool spent 227 million, Arsenal 195 million. Even the two newly promoted sides, Ipswich at 190 million and Hull City at 151 million, spent more than United.

Reordered by ratio: United spent 43 per cent of Chelsea's outlay, 47.6 per cent of Tottenham's, and exactly 33 per cent of Manchester City's. In other words, this club entered the season with a transfer budget worth a third of its direct rivals in the same city, while still carrying the obligation to compete in both the Premier League and the Champions League. That gap does not show up on the transfer ticker. It shows up in the 75th minute of matches when there is nobody left to bring on.

Mismanagement under the Glazers, combined with Ratcliffe's spending cuts, have left Carrick with a squad in desperate need of rebuilding and badly short of what he needs. Shaw and Dalot, the first-choice full-backs, do not have adequate cover. Midfield lacks creativity and leadership. Up front, everything still revolves around Rashford, back from his loan spell at Barcelona, and he has to play to justify a salary of 325,000 pounds a week.

That salary deserves a pause. 325,000 pounds a week is roughly 16.9 million pounds a year, more than 11 per cent of the total spent on the three new signings. When one player carries that share of the cost structure, he becomes the automatic centre of every tactical decision, whatever his form. That stops being a technical choice. It becomes a constraint.

This is the point where data and emotion have to sit at the same table. I once believed in absolute numbers, until a World Cup taught me that emotion is also a variable. A 150 million pound outlay says nothing unless placed beside the wage structure, the media pressure and the expectations of a 74,000-seat stadium. A team is not a collection of metrics; it is a system breathing through every pass — and this system is breathing hard.

The forward line: three names, no consistent scorer

Cunha, Sesko and Zirkzee are all present. None of them scores consistently. That is the shortest and most complete description of United's attack at this stage.

From my experience watching matches in La Liga and the Premier League, a striker who does not score consistently is rarely the striker's own problem. It is usually a supply problem. If the ball always arrives with the forward's back to goal, if crosses always come from blocked wide positions, then conversion rates fall systematically, regardless of finishing skill. Three different forwards with three different technical profiles hitting the same wall is a signal about the system, not the people.

And that system is being locked by the very shortage in midfield. A midfield without a rhythm-setter pushes every ball to the flanks, where the full-backs must push high, where the space behind opens, and where every opposition counter-attack begins. That loop spins fast enough to explain why United score little and concede at inexplicable moments.

Three decisive matches, and the names in the dugout

Carrick will play for his future over the next three matches. After the international break, United face Tottenham in the league, Atletico Madrid in the Champions League and Leeds in the Premier League. Three opponents, three different kinds of test: a direct rival, a European side with a dense defensive structure, and a traditional derby that allows no mental margin for error.

His dismissal remains a real possibility. According to the English press, Fabian Hürzeler of Brighton and Keith Andrews of Brentford are in the running to replace him. Antonio Conte is even more in the frame, having impressed in England with Chelsea — though considerably less so with Tottenham.

Elsewhere, some United fans want Ruben Amorim back. The Portuguese currently manages AC Milan and is under contract until 2029, with an option for a further year until 2030. Several accounts on X have used the hashtag #BringAmorimBack to urge the board into action. This is the reaction I have seen many times in both Vietnam and Spain: when results go wrong, supporters do not look for a cause, they look for a replacement.

The contrarian angle: the problem is not the dugout

My instinct when looking at a crisis is to find the real fracture, not the most visible one. Here, the most visible fracture is Carrick.

Try flipping the story. If Carrick were the problem, replacing him with another name would produce a different team. The evidence does not support that hypothesis. United spent 150 million pounds, less than Hull City and Ipswich Town, two freshly promoted clubs. They spent a third of Manchester City. They have no cover for either first-choice full-back. Baleba, the most talked-about of the three signings, has not played a single minute because of an ankle problem. Within that structure, changing the manager is like changing the driver while the engine is still missing a cylinder.

Correlation is not causation — this is the sentence I have to remind myself of most often. United spending less does not automatically explain five points from five matches. Ipswich at 190 million and Hull at 151 million may not have started any better, and Chelsea at 348 million guarantee nothing. Spending is a necessary condition in some cases, never a sufficient one. But when the same problem appears in midfield, on the flanks and up front across seven consecutive matches, that is structure, not luck.

What deepens my suspicion is how the results are distributed. A team with a form problem produces an alternating run of wins. A team with a system problem produces results entirely dependent on the opponent: wins when the opponent concedes territory, draws or defeats when the opponent takes the initiative. United this season fit the second description exactly. The 4-0 win over Sabah Baku in the Champions League is evidence for that reading, not against it.

Data does not hand over answers; it only surfaces the questions we are brave enough to ask. The real question at Old Trafford is not who will sit in the hot seat next month. The real question is whether the decisions at the top — budget, wage structure, squad depth — will change at all.

Signals to watch in the next round

Fans watch the scoreline; I watch the probabilities. After 2026, I know both collapse — but they collapse at different moments, and that gap is where the information sits.

With United, I will not be tracking goals in the next three matches. I will be tracking how many passes the opponent completes before United win the ball back, and how many attacking sequences United build with at least three forward passes inside the opposition half. If those two indicators improve while results lag, the team is on the right path and the seat can stay quiet for now. If they stay flat while results improve through a single individual moment, the crisis has merely been postponed, and whoever sits in the manager's chair will meet exactly the same problem.

This is why I always start with Italy at Euro 2026. Italy did not win Euro 2026 on luck; they won because they turned data into a way of playing — turning a dry metric into the muscle memory of an entire team. Manchester United today are the mirror image: they have scattered metrics but no coherent way of playing to connect them.

The next three matches will answer part of that question. But the full answer will only arrive when the club's hierarchy decides the problem is bigger than one man on the bench. You can sack a manager in a few hours. Rebuilding a structure takes years. Manchester United have enough time to do the second, and are spending all their patience on the first.