Before Michael Carrick had managed a single game for Manchester United, his former team-mate Gary Neville decided his future.
“Michael shouldn’t get the job at the end of the season, in my opinion. And I’m saying this really unemotionally, right?” he told the Stick to Football podcast.
“No one would have mentioned Michael for the job, right? If you’re going to earn your stripes and manage one of the biggest clubs in the world and handle the pressure that’s going to be thrown at you, I think you have to have years of experience.”
It was a solid opinion which, as Neville suggested, came from an unemotional consideration of the circumstances.
The reason Neville was cautioning against a giddy appointment of Carrick is that United has fallen into that trap before.
Back in 2018, Ole Gunnar Solskjær was drafted in as a temporary replacement for Jose Mourinho and, after an impressive run of results, including an away win against Paris Saint-Germain, was hired permanently.
That initial promise, however, proved not to be an indication that the Norwegian possessed the capabilities to handle the job long-term.
And so after a three-year spell that yielded little progress, he was fired.
The biggest indictment of his managerial talents is that, since leaving Old Trafford, no club of a similar level to Manchester United has shown interest in hiring him.
Yet even Neville, who walked into the new Carrick era with his eyes wide open, is beginning to be drawn into a similar giddy enthusiasm to the one that propelled Solskjær into the manager’s chair.
The former United midfielder has begun life as manager with two impressive back-to-back victories against Manchester City and Arsenal.
“It’s a remarkable turnaround,” gushed Neville after the Arsenal game on Sky Sports.
“Michael Carrick deserves enormous credit, so do the players for what they’ve done. They’ve responded to whatever’s being said to them, and we don’t know what’s being said to them in that training ground, but they are responding like they weren’t before.
“Why? We’ll always speculate, Ruben Amorim could be watching at home thinking, ‘what the hell am I watching from these players right now?’ I’m sure he’s bemused, as we all are in terms of the flip, but the magic has returned in the last week.
“The magic seems to have returned to the club momentarily, the feeling of how to play with the aggression, with the risk, with the great goals, with the attacking of speed, the counter-attack. It feels right.
“And I think one thing that this last week has told us, no matter where it leads to, is that is the way Manchester United have to play, because it’s just felt right watching them.
Ahead of Carrick’s appointment, there had been much media discussion about a coach needing to possess Manchester United DNA.
And with his lengthy playing career under the all-conquering Sir Alex Ferguson, Carrick can lay claim to such heritage.
What he almost certainly doesn’t possess is a managerial pedigree. An average three years at Middlesbrough in the Championship and a previous interim position at Manchester United are the only experiences on his CV.
He is, in many respects, similar to Solskjær, a man whose vibes and playing career are doing the heavy lifting.
United has already seen where this story ends and it would be absolute madness for them to repeat the same mistake for a second time.
Greater tests lie in wait, as Neville pointed out, the morale-boosting victories against title contenders will mean nothing if the club doesn’t win games against lower-ranked teams. Something United has struggled with this season.
He added: “A number of players that commentate on Manchester United have been so angry in this last five or six weeks, because [they played] the likes of Everton, Wolves, West Ham, Bournemouth, Burnley and Leeds, [who] have been really struggling, and only five points were picked up in those games again out of the 18.
“In a lot of those games where Manchester United had opportunities to go into the top four. We’re like, ‘go on’, and they didn’t, and now they’ve done it because I genuinely believe there is a feeling that they are better than what they’ve shown.
“They’ve proved it in these last two games that they can get compact, they can stay together, be aggressive in their shape, can spring out of that shape and play good football and counter-attack and hurt teams, and they can score great goals and get bodies in the box.”
“It’s been thrilling to watch these last two matches, it really has, and it’s a remarkable turnaround.”
The thrill of emotion might be intoxicating, but Neville would do well to listen to the unemotional take he made before a ball had been kicked. The only hope for Manchester United is that its hierarchy ignores emotion when the time comes to make a difficult decision about Carrick’s campaign.
