Michael Carrick, interim manager of Manchester United, is the kind of sentence that lands with a soft thud and a quickening pulse, like you have been handed a battered map and told, go on then, find your way home. There is comfort in it; there is also the familiar dread that the club, once again, has stumbled into the moment rather than engineered it. We back him, completely, no caveats, no hedging, no performative “wait and see.” Carrick knows the place, the weight of it, the way Old Trafford can feel like a cathedral one minute and a courtroom the next.
And yet, you cannot look at this appointment without seeing the empty space beside it, the obvious name left on the table. Ole Gunnar Solskjær, a man who has already done the hardest part of the job, which is surviving it. He has managed the dressing room, lived through the mood swings, absorbed the blame, and kept the thing upright when it wanted to tip over. He is not a theory, he is not a slide deck, he is not a “project.” He is lived experience, scars and all. Passing on Ole feels less like a decision and more like a twitch; a reflex to signal a new era while still standing in the wreckage of the last one.
INEOS, for all the talk of seriousness, has the same old problem, it keeps arriving late to its own emergencies. Ruben Amorim is gone, the back three fixation now another chapter in the book of short reigns and long explanations. The club is forever talking about standards while behaving like a casino at 2 a.m., lights too bright, judgment too dim, chasing the next turn of the wheel. This latest move, Carrick in, Ole out, reads like scrambling for something that looks like stability, even if stability is just a familiar face and a temporary title.
Still, interim is not nothing; interim is a lifeline. It buys time, precious and rare, until the summer, when United can pretend to be a functioning institution and run a proper process. A broader list, proper candidates, real interviews, real fit, real football reasons rather than public relations triage. You can hear the pitch already, “we wanted to take our time,” which is fine, as long as they actually do it this time, and not the usual United version of patience, which is panic with better lighting.
Carrick’s job is not to become the savior; it is to become the sedative. Calm the ship, quiet the noise, give the players something they can hold onto when the stadium starts to hiss. There is a decency to that kind of work, the unglamorous craft of tightening distances, simplifying roles, choosing a shape that does not require a PhD to execute under pressure. If Amorim’s back three felt like an argument with reality, Carrick’s history suggests something more grounded, more honest, a return to structure, and, with it, a chance at points, momentum, and belief.
Everything is a mess; it is always a mess. The question is whether Carrick can make it a manageable mess, the kind where you can see a route out. We do not need poetry; we need competence. We do not need reinvention; we need results. Get us back into the Champions League; give the summer a fighting chance; make the next appointment something other than another expensive apology. For now, Carrick has the keys; we are behind him, and we are begging the adults in charge to stop treating this club like a never-ending emergency.
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