Man Utd DNA ‘proved’ as club stand with ‘one foot in the past’

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·19 January 2026

Man Utd DNA ‘proved’ as club stand with ‘one foot in the past’

While the reporting around Manchester United remains like this, they are f***ed. Why can’t we just celebrate a very good win?

This really isn’t about DNA or a ‘throwback’; it’s just a very good performance.

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Man Utd DNA PROVED

Manchester United beat Manchester City on Saturday. You might have heard. It was rather impressive. You can read 16 Conclusions here; we wrote hundreds upon hundreds of words on the game and yet somehow managed NOT to use the letters D, N and A. Because it’s a right load of old bollocks.

Maybe because Gary Neville is a Sky Sports employee, they have to pretend it’s not a right load of old bollocks, which might be the only explanation for this nonsense:

Michael Carrick proves Manchester United DNA isn’t a myth

We mean this in the nicest possibly way but…does it f***.

Carrick did an excellent job of preparing this Manchester United team to play Manchester City, but let’s not pretend that one game – in which City had a makeshift defence – ‘proved’ anything at all. Otherwise, we would have to pretend that Manchester United beating Liverpool at Anfield in October was ‘proof’ that Ruben Amorim’s system was actually hunky-dory, thank you. And, well, f*** DNA.

We also seem to be collectively pretending that the returns of Amad and Bryan Mbeumo are not absolutely key to United’s improvement; it’s a lot easier to play ‘the Manchester United way’ when you have all your best attacking players on the pitch.

“United’s DNA” has been questioned this week. Is it real? Should United underpin their whole plan on what feels like folklore? Should United move away from Sir Alex Ferguson-ball? Sir Alex was in the director’s box smiling all afternoon long – why? Because Carrick made it all appear simple by taking it back to what United know best, in the best way, on the best possible occasion.

Sir Alex Ferguson-ball? That’s not a thing. He played attacking football when it suited; but that wasn’t always sensible away in Europe, for example. You’re not that successful over 20-odd years by having one good (let’s use wingers!) idea.

Manchester United were excellent in dismantling City on Saturday but that’s not about DNA but about Carrick rather sensibly picking a formation and personnel that suited his players. It does him a disservice if we pin all this on some nebulous concept that belongs in the bin.

Can the media please leave that sh*t to Neville and Wayne Rooney.

Of course Rooney is quoted in the Daily Mail, who promise us a journey ‘Inside Michael Carrick’s derby masterclass’ (which includes the masterstroke of arriving at Old Trafford 15 minutes later than usual. Genius).

Essentially Carrick has taken United back to the basics that were so important when he was a player under Ferguson. He knew that United had to stop City playing by working together to deny them space, close them down quickly in possession and then counter-attack to maximum effect.

You might be forgiven for thinking that’s a description of how any team should play when facing one that dominates possession but no, that’s Ferguson-ball, it seems.

‘Michael Carrick did something unexpected vs Man City but it was what Manchester United needed,’ is the hot take in the Manchester Evening News. Is this the bus thing again?

No, we have to pretend that Manchester United were ever going to try and dominate the ball against Manchester City, because that’s what his Middlesbrough team used to do. And we have to pretend that it’s ‘unexpected’ that they didn’t.

While the Middlesbrough team Carrick forged were looking to dominate possession, United were happy for City to have the ball, safe in the knowledge they would be able to defend when the Blues picked their moment. The Reds had just 32 per cent possession – unheard of for a Carrick team.

But not ‘unheard’ of for a Manchester United team playing City. Especially in this new/old era of Sir Alex Ferguson-ball.

It was exactly what United needed to do. Bernardo Silva said it himself after the match, the Reds ‘took the game to where they are good,’ and doing that proved successful. But that does not mean it was expected.

Oh but it was.

And so it begins in earnest…

‘More games like this and why shouldn’t Michael Carrick get the job?’ is the headline on Martin Samuel’s column in The Times.

We don’t think Carrick will get to play an injury-ravaged Manchester City defence again this season, nor play against a team who seek to dominate possession quite so religiously, but we agree that a whole raft of wins should probably earn him the job.

But this is bollocks…

So this was a throwback, an instant change for the better. An upgrade on the Ruben Amorim era, a reminder of a time when United stood for something more than institutional discord or commercial enterprise. United took the game to Manchester City as equals, not inferiors. They didn’t try to pass them off the pitch because there will be only one winner of that contest; but they were aggressive, ambitious, vigorous, they ran and ran.

It feels like the bare minimum, really. As we said in Winners and Losers, ‘it is better to properly appraise Michael Carrick against the five teams placed 10th and below who Manchester United face next month, rather than his opening salvo of a home Manchester derby followed by Arsenal at the Emirates’.

But no, that will not do for Samuel…

Sir Alex Ferguson, who the cameras always seek out at moments of great elation or despair – and recently it’s often despair – would have recognised this Manchester United. He wouldn’t have known many of the others he has watched since retiring, but Carrick’s red men played with a foot in the past. They created the best chances, they did the most work.

They played ‘with a foot in the past’?! While the reporting around Manchester United remains like this, they are f***ed.