Carrick’s Man Utd future on the line vs Liverpool as Ratcliffe needs excuse | OneFootball

Michael Carrick has created what most would suggest is a nice problem for Sir Jim Ratcliffe to have at Manchester United, but amid reports of ‘misaligned personalities’ might the Red Devils co-owner prefer a defeat to Liverpool on Sunday to avoid exacerbating that problem?

Carrick has won nine of his 13 games in interim charge to all-but secure Champions League football and engender a dramatic and much-needed mood shift at Old Trafford. The players and fans are enjoying life again.

No European football this season and being knocked out of the cup competitions early has also allowed United players more rest than their Premier League rivals and granted Carrick more time to work on tactics and philosophy on the training ground, arguably to no great avail.

Questions have been raised as to just how much Carrick has changed aside from reverting 4-2-3-1, bringing Kobbie Mainoo back into the fold and playing Bruno Fernandes in his preferred position.

As United welcome Liverpool to Old Trafford on Sunday with both teams looking safe and secure in those Champions League qualification spots, the jeopardy in a game which draws eyeballs no matter the stakes is in the futures of the two managers.

We’re endlessly told by reporters with an ear to the ground on Merseyside that Arne Slot’s job is secure no matter what happens from here on out, but the frustrations of restless Liverpool fans will increase, possibly to a sack clamour, should they lose to their bitter rivals.

And while most Manchester United fans are already calling for Carrick to be handed a new contract, a win over Liverpool will turn skeptics into believers and leave Ratcliffe and his INEOS bosses with little option to hand him the permanent reins.

The risk of appointing an alternative after such a successful period wouldn’t be worth taking unless Luis Enrique suddenly decides he’s had enough of winning titles at Paris Saint-Germain.

Carrick said it has “the feel of a one-off game” in a typically measured and composed pre-match interview short of the fire Ratcliffe is looking for.

It was revealed last month that Carrick’s ‘personality does not align with what the British billionaire would typically go for’ with Ratcliffe normally ‘drawn to alpha characters’.

Ratcliffe is set to ‘make the ultimate call, with the Glazer family, who own the majority of shares, content to let him take the lead’, and a stark comparison can be drawn between Amorim – whom Ratcliffe ‘really, really liked’ – and Carrick on the basis of chats over a hot beverage at the training ground.

“I really, really like Ruben,” Ratcliffe said in March last year. “Every time I go to the training ground, I sit down and have a cup of coffee with him and tell him where it’s going wrong, and he tells me to f*** off. I like him. Give the guy a break.”

Carrick opened up on a less confrontational meeting at Carrington last month.

He revealed: “I met with Sir Jim Ratcliffe at Carrington. We had a chat, a cup of tea. It was nice to see him showing his support. As a football club we’re hugely connected, it’s a big part. I’m really conscious that’s how it should be.”

Short of a complete personality change leading Carrick to aim swears at Ratcliffe or maybe dash the tea in his face, he’s not going to persuade the United chief that he has the right character to become the permanent boss.

What he can do is make it impossible for Ratcliffe not to give him the job through his team’s results and performances; a comprehensive win over arch rivals Liverpool would likely be enough to force his hand.

So with very little riding on this game other bragging rights amid scant evidence that Ratcliffe cares all that much about the fans’ joy, the British billionaire might just be hoping for a reason not to appoint the man he evidently believes isn’t fit for purpose.