Tottenham had Rodrigo Bentancur sent off at Old Trafford, were down to ten men for the final stretch, were losing, and still left with a point. Dominic Solanke headed in a Sandro Tonali cross in the second minute of stoppage time, fending off Lisandro Martinez on his way to the bottom corner, and Manchester United's afternoon fell apart in the way it keeps falling apart. A man up, a goal up, and somehow not enough.
Michael Carrick had everything a manager is supposed to want. Bryan Mbeumo had put United ahead in the 73rd minute, finishing a move Matheus Cunha carved out inside the box. Five minutes later Bentancur, on since the 66th, leaned his head into Luke Shaw's face and walked. From the 78th minute on, United were playing against ten men who were chasing the game. The job was to be boring: keep the ball, kill the clock, take the three points home. United couldn't do it.
Call it a freak header, a bizarre lapse. Watch the goal and you can almost buy it: a cross into the box, a defender beaten in the air at the worst possible moment. Freak things happen in football. But a lead against ten men gets surrendered by a team that stops making the extra pass and stops holding its shape, inviting pressure it has no reason to invite. You can see it in how United retreated toward their own box instead of running the opposition into the ground.
United keep letting opponents off the hook when those opponents have fewer players than they do. When a thing happens once, it's bad luck. When it keeps happening, it's the manager.
Carrick was handed the permanent job and a contract that runs to 2028. He inherited a mess, and there was goodwill behind the appointment. That goodwill can't survive results like this. The draw leaves United with six points from their opening six matches, their worst start in forty years, back to 1986-87. That's the season Ron Atkinson was sacked and a man named Alex Ferguson replaced him in November. United fans know exactly what that date means.
The standings move. Six matches isn't a season, and United sit twelfth with a Champions League trip to Atletico Madrid on the horizon, so there's time. Time only helps if the problem gets fixed. The problem is a team that can't be trusted to protect a lead with a man advantage. That's Carrick's job to solve, and right now he has no answer for it.
