Manchester United should not sack Michael Carrick after Sunday's 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth. Dropping Bruno Fernandes was the correct, overdue call. Both of those things can be true on the same miserable afternoon, and the people inside Old Trafford seemed to grasp it better than anyone currently paid to run the club.
⚡ Upset:Bournemouth had a 33% chance before kickoff and beat Man United 3–0.
39%
Watch how the day ended. Carrick was clapped off by the Stretford End and patted his chest in response. The second he disappeared down the tunnel, the applause turned to boos aimed at the players, and the rest of the anger went straight at the Glazers, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Jason Wilcox. The supporters diagnosed the illness in real time, and blamed the players and the owners for it.
The numbers are grim and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. United have gone eight matches without a win. Before their trip to Chelsea, they've won one of their first eight league games, sit on seven points and are down in 16th, one of their worst starts in decades. Midweek they were beaten 4-1 at Como in the Champions League. A record like that gets managers fired, and most weeks I'd be the first one swinging. Not this week, and not this manager.
Start with the Fernandes decision, because that's where the noise is loudest. After the Como hammering, his captain stood up and said in public: "It was a decision from the staff to not press man-to-man and sometimes leave space behind." Gary Neville called that a direct attack on the manager. He's right. A skipper second-guessing his coach's tactics in front of a microphone after a four-goal defeat is a discipline issue, and the only lever a manager has to answer it is team selection. Carrick pulled it. Fernandes sat on the bench the whole 90, with Matheus Cunha coming on at half-time for the dreadful Youri Tielemans instead.
The one real argument against it: if Fernandes had become that much of a problem, leave him out of the squad entirely rather than parking him as an unused substitute. Maybe. But the idea that his absence cost United the game is nonsense. This squad capitulated without him exactly as it has capitulated with every advantage handed to it. They lost 1-0 at home to a Manchester City side down to ten men from the 23rd minute after Phil Foden's red card. They drew 1-1 with a Tottenham team that had Rodrigo Bentancur sent off for headbutting Luke Shaw, dropping two points at home after leading. Twice in weeks, a man up, and they couldn't finish the job. That problem belongs to the players on the pitch.
The bigger issue is the players who have now outlasted several managers and go quiet the moment it gets hard. Fernandes isn't even the only senior name to take a public shot at the people above him lately. Lisandro Martinez aimed his own remarks at the club's leadership after the Atletico game and found himself limited to a second-half cameo. That's two senior players undercutting the staff in a matter of weeks, with ownership still treating the manager's chair as the release valve while the dressing room goes untouched.
Carrick earned a two-year deal only five months ago by coming in for Ruben Amorim in January and dragging United to a third-place finish and the Champions League. Fire him now and you remove the one figure in the building the crowd still wants, while the actual culprits dress for Chelsea as if nothing happened. It's been 13 years since Sir Alex Ferguson walked out, and United have spent most of them blaming the coach and protecting the players. Do it again and they'll be right back here by spring with a new name on the touchline and the same rot underneath him.
