Manchester United Thread 25/26 - Teamtalk/Transfers/Gossip Mod Note in OP 12.02.26

Perhaps the fitness levels were somewhat better under RA, but reality is we also struggled with 2 games per week under him. Just as we did last night. Simply put, this squad doesn't cope well with more than 1 game per week.

The West Ham game early December. The Wolves game end of the year and vs Leeds early in January. We looked leggy and lethargic in all of those too. Too much is being made of the fitness under Carrick imo. We have not been at all capable at managing the games this season.

The reality is squad depth just isn't there and even managing game load when there are no European games and barely any domestic cup ties is a struggle.

Midfield requires major surgery….we're expecting a 34 year old to keep putting in 9/10 performances at DM week in, week out. It's just not realistic or sustainable.

Whoever is in the Head Coaches seat come next Summer needs a proper midfield and some squad depth to work with.

We were aware this squad would be able to counter attack and score goals though. We don't see any progression there do we? Some great results but generally speaking they will always revert to type and will not get you were you want to go. Results will follow performance in the long run.

Good time for Carrick to flash his credentials now and show something I'm not convinced he has.

5 defeats in a row. I wonder is there a Spurs fan equivalent of the haircut fella…

Damn... Spurs must be odds on for the drop now. West Ham & Forest both showing some grit, fight and determination. Spurs showing absolutely sod all.

Edit: nope, West Ham slightly shorter odds. Wolves, Burnley, Hammers then Spurs.

My worry with Carrick and whoever takes over in the summer is that they make us competitive to a point, i.e. can qualify for the champions league and win the odd cup, but take us no further than that. The ambition should be to be competing for leagues and champions leagues.

This isn't on the manager imo. How much better do you think Carrick could or should be doing with the current squad? Like the club heirarchy has been negligent in squad building, apart from maybe the last 2 windows. It's been obvious the squad is not up to the task for years now.

If Carrick or whoever competes to a point that is reasonable then it's on the club to make the decisions and purchases to get to the next level.

There's only so much lipstick you can put on a pig, and in my opinion, Carrick has applied a lot of lipstick to this pig since taking over.

That’s probably a little bit harsh on the squad of players. They were in great shape and played very well against City and Arsenal.

Take the last game. It’s half time and Newcastle are down to 10 men. We have just managed to equalise after what was a poor first half from our side. Lucky to be going into the break in such favourable circumstances. At half time you have the opportunity to make changes, set the plan for taking advantage of the extra man, motivate the players to turn things around in the second half.

Second half wasn’t good enough at all and your question is what can Carrick do? Not leave it until the 76th minute to bring on an attacking player is one thing that could have resulted in a different outcome. Little things like that can be the difference. There is a balance in your attacking subs coming at the right time to be the most effective sure, but those subs felt late. Zirkzee looked like he could have done something. An extra 10 mins with him and Amad on and you could have a completely different story.

He could have used Heaven instead of Malacia. Throwing Malacia in at 1-1 was madness.

We didn’t deserve anything from the game but we definitely could have won it.

But Newcastle did attack. A lot. And they were destroying us in that first half. It’s too easy to basically put the blame on other teams.

Everton was another game where some expected some form of low block but they came out and played. Got back well defensively when they needed to but they did attack also. We won that game so it’s not an issue of course.

West Ham was the only game under Carrick where you could say this about and Nuno played it to perfection.

Do you think? I actually thought it wasn't especially far away from him and he could have done better. He seemed to be caught flat footed and like he wasn't ready/expecting the shot.

But as with everything on the internet….I caveat that with he has been brilliant for us since coming in.

I'm not convinced Carrick is the man for the job full time, but that depends on the other options, and also what happens in the rest of the season. However, no one needs to decide now!

Personally I thought Amad was brought on too late, and obviously hindsight says Malacia with no game time wasn't the right call (but he has been praised since taking over for square pegs in square holes).

Casemiro can't play twice a week, and essentially this team doesn't perform without him playing or him playing well. That was true under Ten Hag, Amorim and Carrick. Martinez is massive miss as well.

United still need quite the list to improve the team and the squad depth - 2 full backs, at least 3 midfielders.

I kinda disagree, but my disagreement also carries fear.

I don't think appointing a manager to get us CL and cup runs is a bad thing. Given where we are, and the managers avaiable, it might be all we can do right now. Someone to set us up solidly in the top 4 and capable of maintaining that positioin will competing in the CL would be fairly big progress.

The fear is that if someone is consistently getting your 3rd and quarters of the CL - do the club have the ambition to decide that is no longer good enough and sack them - potentially pushing on to a proper PL push, or potentially destabilising the progress and regressing back to struggling for top 4/5.

I also find it hard to judge carrick - cause I am not seeing what else he can do. Maybe with better players it doesn't get significantly better, but imo the team on Wednesday had issues in central midfield, both fullbacks and both CBs (for different reasons). We lacked physicality in CM and fullback especially and vs Newcastle if they are playing well at all you can't lack physicality. He can't magic up a new pair of new fullbacks. He can't give Casemiro and Kobbie legs. He can't give Maguire pace, he can't give Yoro physical assertiveness (he COULD have made decisions far better than Malacia at left back though)

Given those issues, the issues that would exist for any manager, I'm not sure what else Carrick can really do. Maybe Dalot should have started cause he does offer physicality. Maybe Amad should have started ahead of a poor Mbeumo but that is hindsight. Maybe you could have dropped Bruno deeper instead of mainoo (as we did later in the game). But its kinda moving the deckchairs on the titanic.

Until we sort out CM and Fullback (and I think the weaknesses feed into each other) and possibly CB (Do all Maguire, MDL and Martinez hamper a higher lined midified?) I think we would struggle with any manager at all. So is Carrick good or bad? Hard to say when there are clear limitations with the players that are inescapable.

He should have come on instead of Malacia who is absolutely useless.

I think Malacia's injury finished him at the highest level, not sure he was good enough to begin with, dreaded him coming on the other night as I felt he'd be exposed immediately. Heaven really should've come on for Maz in reality.