INEOS Have Hung Michael Carrick Out To Dry At Manchester United

MU

Manchester United The Red Devils

Opinion

As Sir Jim Ratcliffe awaited the arrival of Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada in his resident city of Monaco, likely in INEOS corporate buildings located at 4, Avenue de Roqueville, there was a man across the English Channel, leading a training session for the football team they’re currently running into the ground.

Michael Carrick is expected to be relieved of his duties by Manchester United in the coming days, with the minority and majority owners of the club currently in crisis talks regarding the future. Talks are taking place with potential candidates for the next managerial role, despite the fact that Michael Carrick has not been officially informed he is being sacked by the club.

Word broke from those close to the club after the Bournemouth game that Carrick was due to be relieved of his duties. The feeling is that INEOS had decided that the former United midfielder was not their man in the future, but hesitated to fully pull the trigger because they had no succession plan. Carrick would likely have been sacked at this stage if INEOS were a competent unit with a plan in place for these disasters, but they are not, and they don’t. Carrick has been left in an apparent limbo for the last two weeks, and he unfortunately still has not been put out of his misery.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 25: Michael Carrick, Manager of Manchester United, acknowledges the fans after the Premier League 2026/27 match between Manchester United and AFC Bournemouth at Old Trafford on October 25, 2026 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

Carrick deserves better

Carrick is aware that United are speaking to replacements. Erik ten Hag was also aware that INEOS were talking to potential replacements as he awaited the sack just after the FA Cup final, only for the club to backtrack and keep him in charge anyways, only to sack him three months on. The briefs are coming from the club. They are ready to make their decision, but have left Carrick in the dark about who will lead the players he will likely be forced to depart tomorrow while they decide which manager they’re going to throw under the bus next.

If you’ve made the decision to sack the manager, you cannot allow him to take training the following day after briefing everyone in England that you intend to sack him. The actions of INEOS over the last fortnight have been a cowardly show of leadership, continuously lobbing a club legend under the bus and allowing him to take every single blow from the public. The owners decided ten Premier League games ago that he was the man and gave him one true first-team player and nobody new in a back four that contains players from the Louis Van Gaal era to go and try to compete in a league that saw Hull and Ipswich outspend Man United.

You can argue Carrick doesn’t have the pedigree, credentials, or resume-wise to warrant a big transfer window, but 12 wins in 17 games is one of the best records for a manager post Sir Alex Ferguson, and that in itself warranted some respect and backing to try and push on to that next level.

Instead, the cycle has repeated. United are about to sack another manager, who has a squad built for him through the eyes of the four managers before him, to bring in another manager with a completely different philosophy that may not need or want the players INEOS have signed. Their best-in-class recruitment policy is turning out to be worse than the Glazer era, and whether you think another manager will get the group of players playing better, he won’t magically make Benjamin Sesko fit. He can’t turn an ageing and weak unit of a back four into a side coherent enough to challenge the elite in the Premier League. It’s not going to happen, and he’ll be at the mercy of a joint ownership which has shown, over the last three years and 21 years respectively that they cannot be trusted, so the cycle will inevitably repeat itself.

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Mauricio Pochettino seems to be the name being touted as the frontrunner in the media at the minute, but as David Ornstein reported, this is a candidate United were underwhelmed with two years ago. Someone the club refused to consider as one of their top two candidates to take over from Erik ten Hag. If they choose to return to someone they did not want two years ago, United are doomed beyond belief.

That’s not a slight on Pochettino, but if he wasn’t the man for you before you made the decision that started all of this mess in keeping Erik ten Hag and then hiring Ruben Amorim, how can he be the man now? How on earth could you be impressed by him now if you simply weren’t back then?

The squad isn’t good enough to compete. It’s not a relegation-battling squad quality-wise, but accompany it with the rotten interior that has corroded the foundations of Old Trafford and the football club, and you get a situation like this where United are languishing around the relegation places, with some fans secretly hoping they go down so they can have a reprieve from the Glazer ownership.

Ratcliffe spoke when he gained a minority stake in the club about the need to give managers time. He stated the issue at United has been the environment, not always the managers, and his aim was effectively to create a better environment to support the managers they would hire. United are approaching their third sacking in three years under the INEOS leadership. The environment is worse than it’s ever been, courtesy of that leadership alongside the grotesque Glazer family, and yet managers still continue to take the brunt of the blame.

Carrick won’t be shocked by the sack. He understands the standards at United, and relegation is so far from the expectation at the football club where he holds a season ticket that he won’t have any protests when he does receive that curtain call from the hierarchy. But perhaps that same hierarchy should follow him out the door.

All eyes are on whether Manchester United’s next manager will fit into the supposed club style of play touted by Ratcliffe in an interview three years ago, or whether that was just empty, meaningless words by the former Chelsea season ticket holder.

Mauricio Pochettino has since this morning near enough been named as the next Man United manager as per David Ornstein, further compounding some of the issues discussed in this article, as Michael Carrick again took training at Manchester United.