Carrick sack accelerating for one reason at Man Utd in the face of no ’emotion’ | OneFootball

Michael Carrick manages Manchester United in much the same way he played for them. He’s cool, calm, considered, doesn’t give much (or anything) away and is never too up or too down.

He’s a man on an even keel. Much more Carlo Ancelotti or Zinedine Zidane in the touchline stakes than Mikel Arteta or Diego Simeone. That’s absolutely fine if you are Carlo Ancelotti or Zinedine Zidane, or indeed Michael Carrick when you’re winning games of football.

Not knowing how a manager is feeling in no way makes them a bad manager, and we would never advocate for forced expressions of passion. Ancelotti has won it all and displays his emotions, good or bad, purely through the raising of a single eyebrow. It’s part of what makes him such an icon.

Carrick does show one strong emotion in post-match interviews and press conferences. He’s very capable of frustration.

“I need to show more emotion? In what way?” an emotional Carrick asked.

When told fans might want to see him show more emotion, he again asked: “In what way? I’m asking, how, what do you want me to show?”

He has every right to be irritated. He’s not an arm-waving, gesticulating, technical area-flouting narcissist (mentioning no names) and shouldn’t pretend to be. A fist punch and a smile is a perfectly valid way of celebrating your team scoring a goal and he can’t help having a resting face of misery.

If his Manchester United players were doing sod all, as was the case when they needed a goal against Manchester City and then Brighton, and he was jumping up and down on the touchline the optics would arguably be worse.

It doesn’t matter so long as Carrick can prove that he knows what he’s doing.

Because that’s the problem with doing nothing on the touchline. When you’re winning you’re a man of inscrutable intellect; some sort of enigmatic mastermind thinking four or five moves ahead. But when you’re watching your team surrender a 2-0 lead you look dumbfounded, shellshocked and out of your depth.

Carrick’s only recourse therefore is to illustrate his tactic nous, aside from his team actually showing it on the pitch, is to explain it to us in interviews and press conferences.

But he either can’t, which is damning, or he won’t, which is ill-advised if he wants the Manchester United fans and the board to keep faith in him.

When asked what he put the United capitulation against Brighton down to, he answered like someone who has walked into a team meeting and learned for the first time that they are presenting the key findings of research they haven’t done.

He told the Sky Sports reporter: “A lot of things, there’s a number of things we’ll look at and dissect and… quite a bit of erm, err, where it went wrong. Erm, but we can’t, can’t, we can’t accept that, we can’t accept that, erm, as a group, erm.”

When asked to provide an insight into what the problems are at Man Utd, he said: “We’ll get better at a number of things.”

Ah yes, the “things”. For the love of God man, trot out the buzzwords: counter-press, overloads, low block. He doesn’t need to be one of the great orators; frankly we were sick of Ruben Amorim’s charm by the end. Just talk about second balls for a bit.

Because the Manchester United fans need something to hang their hats on; some evidence that Michael Carrick knows what he’s doing.

If his players aren’t showing it on the pitch and he’s not showing it on the touchline, then he needs to explain what’s going wrong, because plenty is and there are very few clues as to what his plan is to fix all the “things”.