Michael Carrick’s Man Utd reign has turned into a cruel humiliation ritual ...Middle East

Chelsea 2-0 Man Utd (Rogers 50’, Palmer pen 64’)

STAMFORD BRIDGE — Manchester United: part football club, part conclave, part stay of execution.

The implosion at Chelsea will surely be the end of Michael Carrick. By the end, his shoulders had slumped just enough to give the look of a manager who knows the game is up. He was in charge at Stamford Bridge only because the United hierarchy had not got their ducks in a row to anoint a successor. Accordingly, they left a lame one in the dugout.

The fact Carrick finally got his system right only exposed how badly he has been let down. The job has become the ultimate hiding to nothing.

But first – and bear with us here – a word of defence for Jason Wilcox (sort of), whose day began with the travelling fans calling him a wanker and ended with having to watch the results of the woefully inept summer he oversaw.

United did not just collapse because the entire back four was AWOL for Morgan Rogers’ opener – nor because for a centre-back so small, Lisandro Martinez performed an impressively high elbow on Wesley Fofana.

Any hope of avoiding another shameful result disintegrated when United were at their best. Bruno Fernandes covered more than six kilometres of ground in the first half, a stinging rebuke to the fiercest criticism of the captain – that he is not willing to put in the hard yards and shirks responsibility. When it mattered, he blazed United’s best chance over the bar. Amad Diallo’s finishing was much of the same.

Which leads back to Wilcox, and the reason either of them were in those positions in the first place. In the absence of Benjamin Sesko, Carrick has no centre-forward. That ought to be on Wilcox, but the rot goes higher than that. Who were the candidates, at the price-point Jim Ratcliffe makes available? Erling Haaland is a freakish exception in a league almost devoid of proper goalscorers. The poacher is dead. Long live the wide man.

It says everything that another striker was not seen as a priority. Wilcox is not the only sporting director suffering in the post-Pep world, where No 9s are not only unfashionable but almost extinct. They are all the harder to come by for deeply unserious institutions, where the entire defence and most of the midfield ought to be up for sale.

The axe will of course fall onto Carrick before that. City are not the only Manchester club mulling relegation. It is the longest winless run for 38 years.

It cannot come to that and Eddie Howe or Antonio Conte, or perhaps another poor soul, will no doubt salvage the season in time.

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Carrick has done what he can. He yielded to playing Amad on the right and Matheus Cunha on the left. The return of Fernandes was not just brazen populism, however well it went down with United’s support. It was the best option at No 10 in the absence of options and worked when he was pinging passes through the middle to Bryan Mbeumo.

Xabi Alonso, equally desperate to be loved, took the same gamble on Estevao. His disallowed goals let United off the hook, when it could have been much worse. Somehow, the difference between Chelsea’s forgotten man and Bruno is as stark as still and sparkling water. One fizzed, on both wings, through the middle, bamboozling a midfield that is no better without Youri Tielemans and Kobbie Mainoo. Carlos Baleba lost possession 12 times and did not win a single tackle.

There is nothing on the bench to change the tune. This is the world Carrick inhabits, which is why it will not be a popular sacking. He was given the job by virtue of his United DNA, a double-helix spanning his modesty and hard work and his history as a player. For a time it allowed United to run on good vibes. The vibes are now unmistakably bad. That makes the humiliation ritual to which he is being subjected even more cruel.

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