Michael Carrick, blah, blah, blah. Manchester United could put Donald Trump in the dugout for all the difference it would make to supporters fed up with failure. Hold on, maybe that is not as daft as it seems, a super Trumper to declare United great again.
He could make them champions by decree, banish Ineos and the Glazers, and send in the National Guard to arrest Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta, Unai Emery and Arne Slot, for crimes against United.
Short of locking up Guardiola and Arteta immediately and disbanding their teams, what hope of success does interim coach Carrick have in the Manchester derby at the weekend and at Arsenal eight days later?
Carrick might or might not be a good coach. His output at Middlesbrough, his first and only senior posting, was too small a sample to meaningfully judge. That he has not worked since the sack last summer hardly inspires. And before that he was part of the coaching staff at United under Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, both of whom were fired.
At least he was unbeaten in the three games he managed as caretaker between Solskjaer’s parting and the arrival of uber-seer Ralf Rangnick. The truly dispiriting, indeed mind-boggling aspect to all of this is the state in which Carrick finds the club, no further forward than his last occupancy. It might even be further back, given the rank inadequacy of the blundering Ineos regime.
Whilst serving as England rugby head coach, Eddie Jones believed the only way to resurrect English rugby was to blow it up and start again, free from the dependence on public school pathways. It is increasingly obvious that something similar is required at Old Trafford, not just to erase an antiquated stadium but to snap the suffocating tendrils clinging to the past.
A new, dynamic framing is required that does not reference DNA or Sir Alex Ferguson. The former is nothing more than sorcery born of desperation, the latter a museum piece cast in bronze. Let him remain so, to be revered and honoured but not consulted. After all, Ferguson thought David Moyes the best man to succeed him. The club is still working through the folly of that masterstroke.
The DNA argument, the idea that some definitive attribute unique to United courses through the club, distinguishing it from any other, is a cultish and ruinous thread that inhibits not liberates, strangling attempts to make sense of the present.
Ferguson should be admired, revered – not consulted (Photo: Getty)Sir Matt Busby did not tap into some divine energy when he arrived at a bombed out Old Trafford in 1945. He was the divine energy, a young coach who had learned the game as a player at Manchester City and Liverpool. Busby took the job only on condition he had full control of the team affairs, selection and recruitment, which was a radical shift at the time.
Similarly, United appointed Ferguson for the quality of a CV that smashed the duopoly of Celtic and Rangers in Scotland and brought European success to Aberdeen. Nowt to do with DN bloody A. Of course Ferguson was an admirer of Busby and the attacking template he introduced, but wingers were not playing under some industry patent at Old Trafford, nor were United the only club with a youth team.
Busby was successful because he could pick from Duncan Edwards, Eddie Colman and Tommy Taylor before Munich, and Denis Law and George Best after it. The rest is just folkish embellishment.
Ferguson’s great strength, like Busby’s, was his instinct for character and leaders. Eric Cantona, Paul Ince, Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane, were Fergie exemplars, all of whom emerged not via the club’s fabled talent factory but the cheque book. This allowed him to move on from one great team to another at scale, much like City today.
Yes Ferguson repeatedly referenced the “United way”, speaking of a type of “Manchester United player” because this suited the narrative. Fergie and his twin power source, chief executive David Gill, understood acutely the value of brand. And as the industry-leading club, Ferguson had more power to attract players than any in the early Premier League era.
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United’s struggles today are as much to do with the emergence of rival powers that have whittled away their advantage in the market. United are still a marquee name but no more compelling, perhaps less, than City, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea.
His two games in charge rammed this lesson down Darren Fletcher’s throat. For all his trumpeting of DNA, for all the fireside chats with Ferguson, it all came to nought on the pitch. The players were not good enough to beat Burnley, nor a second-string Brighton in the FA Cup.
The most salient commentary came in the posh seats by God himself. “For f***’s sake,” muttered Ferguson as the camera sought him out in the dying seconds of the Brighton tie. He might have been speaking of the last 13 years as well as the latest omnishambles authored by Ineos.
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