There is something wonderful about the first weekend of a football season. The table is clean. The grass is perfect. Nobody has been mathematically eliminated from anything, and every supporter is permitted, for a few glorious hours, to believe the whole damn thing might work.
Manchester United begin again this weekend.
And Michael Carrick deserves to walk into it with Old Trafford, the away end, the pubs, the podcasts and every miserable bastard refreshing transfer news at midnight firmly behind him.
Because the people above him have not done their part.
Carrick inherited a club that had finished 15th and somehow dragged it to third place. Third. Champions League football. Against the odds, against the expectations and against the institutional gravity that has spent more than a decade pulling Manchester United toward mediocrity.
That should have been the starting gun.
Instead, United spent the summer behaving like a man who finally gets his leaking roof fixed and decides now would be a good time to stop buying shingles.
The squad needed reinforcement. Everyone knew it. Carrick knew it. The board knew it. You could see the holes from space. United are heading into four competitions with Champions League football back on the calendar and a squad that still feels one injury away from somebody looking around the dressing room and asking if Phil Jones is available.
Carrick earned backing.
He got caution.
And that distinction matters when the inevitable rough patch arrives.
Because it will arrive. This is football. There will be a miserable Tuesday night somewhere in Europe. There will be a league match where United dominate for 80 minutes and concede from some bastardized combination of a long throw, a shin and a deflection. Somebody important will pull a hamstring. The internet will declare civilization over.
When that happens, remember this summer.
Do not allow the board’s failure to properly reinforce the squad to become Carrick’s crime.
That does not mean Carrick is above criticism. He is the Manchester United manager. Criticism comes with the tracksuit. Bad substitutions should be called bad substitutions. Bad performances should be called bad performances. Nobody needs another cult of personality at Old Trafford.
But there is a difference between accountability and abandonment.
Carrick gave United something last season that has been in desperately short supply: competence, dignity and belief. He took a team crawling through the wreckage and made them look like Manchester United again.
Now the supporters have to do their part.
Hull away is the first page. Then comes the Champions League, the winter slog, the injuries, the bad refereeing decisions, the stupid goals and all the other beautiful nonsense that makes us give too much of our lives to this club.
Maybe United challenge for the title. Maybe the thin squad catches up with them. Maybe this season ends in glory, frustration or something painfully in between.
Whatever happens, Carrick should never have to wonder whether the supporters are with him.
The board had its chance to back him.
Now it is our turn.
Back Michael Carrick to the hilt.
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