Manchester United have made their worst start to a league season in 40 years. Six points from six games, the lowest tally after six matches since 1986, boos raining down at Old Trafford. If you want to know who's to blame, look above the dugout. The men in it keep changing and this keeps happening.
Run the names. Moyes had a start so bad it triggered the record books. Solskjaer matched an unwanted mark stretching back decades. Ten Hag managed it twice, the second time sinking the club to 15th with 42 points, their lowest finish in a generation. Amorim lasted 14 months before being sacked in January with the team sixth. Now it's Carrick, six points from six, matching 1986. Five managers, five different ideas about football, recruitment and shape, and the same result every time.
The problem lives above the training ground. When every coach who walks through the door ends up with the same headline, the building is the variable. The people who sign off the transfers, hire and fire, and have spent more than a decade promising a reset while delivering another October like this one, they're the constant, and they're the problem.
This should embarrass anyone calling for Carrick's head. He's the same man who took over in January with United drifting under Amorim and dragged them to a third-place finish and a Champions League return, winning 11 of his 16 league games and losing only twice. Months ago he was the answer. The squad didn't suddenly forget how to play. The thing that resets every summer at this club reset again.
The Tottenham draw is the whole dysfunction in 90 minutes. United led 1-0 through Bryan Mbeumo, then watched Rodrigo Bentancur get sent off, and still conceded a Dominic Solanke header in stoppage time. A man up, a goal up, and they let it slip. It was the second time this season they'd dropped points after conceding late, and the second time they'd failed to beat ten men after doing exactly that against Manchester City last month. A club that keeps losing games it has already won has a mental problem, and you don't fix that by firing the latest tenant.
Carrick inherited a mess, and any judgment has to weigh the regression he cleaned up. That's true, but it's also the whole indictment. A man capable of a top-three finish is now presiding over a 40-year low in the same calendar year, and the only things that changed are the ones nobody at United ever puts under the microscope: the ownership and hierarchy, the recruitment that pumps up every pre-season and deflates by matchday six.
What's grim is how normal this feels. A United record collapse used to be a scandal. Now it's a season. The shock has gone, replaced by a weary certainty that whoever is standing on that touchline, the number will be historically bad and the fans will be told to be patient about progress measured against last year's disaster.
Sack Carrick if you like. Hire the next big name, give him a transfer window and a fresh identity, and wait. The headline is already written. It just needs a new date and a new manager's face next to it.
