Why I am backing Man Utd to win Premier League ahead of Arsenal | OneFootball

Of course Arsenal should win the league; they probably have the greatest, deepest squad and have found a successful style of play. Nobody else comes close.

They may continue to attract widespread opprobrium for how they play – though I think familiarity will make it less effective – but why should they care? People are still turning up. So the expectation and the pressure is all theirs to own and I expect an inability to deal with it.

It’s often said defending the title is notoriously hard but in fact it isn’t unusual. A top-flight club has successfully defended its title 27 times across 12 different clubs and in the Premier League era, the title has been successfully defended 11 times by three clubs: Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City.

So there should be nothing to stop them. Except their mentality and Michael Carrick.

In the second half of last season, Manchester United had a better record than Arsenal and they beat the Gunners 3-2. They earned more points than anyone else and won more games than anyone else. In other words, they were better than anyone else. This seems massively undervalued.

For some reason, their superior performance has gone under the radar. Manchester United picked up 39 points out of a possible 51 under him, which was three points more than Arsenal over that exact same period. Why underrate the most successful manager in the league last season? The only-played-once-a-week ‘excuse’ for this success has been doing a lot of heavy lifting, as if being the best-performing side is therefore made somehow easy. Going by the facts as we know them, Carrick is obviously the best manager in the Premier League.

It’s easy to be cynical about United. They’ve been a byword for stupidity off the pitch – led by the laughable. hapless clown Sir Jim Radcliffe – and hopelessness on the pitch. Maybe the entirely irrelevant performance of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has unfairly cast him in shadow. Undoubtedly, no one expects United to win it this year. There’s no pressure on them to do so, which could work in their favour.

Maybe it’s also because he’s a softly-spoken, measured, rather self-effacing and emotionally rational beta male. Certainly, nothing will get you more abuse in the bear-pit of social media. Indeed, I do wonder if it’s his personality that makes some people think he’s not up to it, or perhaps don’t want to believe it because it contradicts everything they think successful should look like.

So Manchester United’s excellent performance in the second half of last season is the reason I’m backing them to win the league. That is just based on hard facts; United were better than Arsenal and were certainly more watchable. Who knows how effective Chelsea or anyone else will be? You can’t say. But we know Carrick got the best results in the league.

Arsenal may have the best, deepest squad but the evidence so far is that Carrick and his team have the superior mentality. While at Middlesbrough, Carrick enjoyed a reputation for having a composed, understated demeanor and was praised for his man-management. He was also praised for his coaching of talent like Chuba Akpom, who was transformed from a fringe player into the Championship Player of the Year, scoring 28 league goals. That’s not nothing.

Morgan Rogers, Emmanuel Latte Lath and Hayden Hackney were all nurtured by Carrick. Okay, like everyone he was eventually sacked for not getting promotion, but there’s been nothing since to suggest that the same calm approach and coaching qualities have not been effective at United. And calmness and grace under pressure are not traits anyone could ascribe to Mikel Arteta who, at times, seems so uptight that you couldn’t pull a pencil out of his arse. With the ramped-up expectation and pressure, that’s unlikely to get any better.

United have their flaws and some gaping weaknesses which may yet be addressed, but their poor attitude was the biggest issue, as well as tactical inflexibility. It may not have taken profound tactical tweaks to solve, as some – keen to downplay Carrick’s abilities – are quick to assert, but no one else could do it, could they? Some great and storied managers, the best money could buy, have all failed. A happy dressing room is essential and Carrick appears to have achieved that.

Their current financial continence suggests lessons have been learned after whazzing millions on the inappropriate. The idea of a good or bad window is rather fatuous, not least because it ignores the good players already at the club. How about coaching and improving them, rather than trying to shortcut the whole process with money, which is the only option some seem to see as a route to success?

Football wasn’t always so shallowly wedded solely to this spendthrift notion. It is the cause more broadly of The Way Things Are. And it’s proven not to work a lot of the time, as United have themselves often discovered.

That said, much like yourself, I have a proud record at being hopelessly wrong in my predictions, so as logical and fact-based as the case I’ve made is, it’s not unlikely that I’m entirely wrong. That’s one prediction I’m certain about.