“We haven’t started the season that bad. It’s not that bad. We’ve got close to coming away with three points today. That’s football. There are moments we can deal with a bit better, but we’ll be fine.”
Smiling for the cameras and at peace with a bitter late equaliser (or at least pretending to be) after the third game of the season ends in a 2-2 draw is decent PR for a club hoping for a there-or-thereabouts campaign.
But to coin a phrase, this is Manchester United Football Club we’re talking about. Are you sure you’ll be fine?
For now, maybe. There is no impending meltdown. The results aren’t yet hitting like nostalgia, the goals aren’t yet loaded with the weight of a difficult week ahead: the furrowed brows of earnest ex-United pundits, the rumbling recriminations and boardroom chatter, the crisis machine whirring into life.
But between the main story beats - the filler content, the stuff that trundles along between the boxes – it’s beginning to resemble all the other tenures.
Wrapped up in Carrick’s lukewarm assessment of a lukewarm performance is the crux of it all, because when handing him the job on a permanent basis nobody appears to have asked the most obvious question: do we think Carrick can win the Premier League title? Can we really visualise Carrick becoming the legendary manager who ends United’s 15 years of pain? Do we think he is the next Mikel Arteta?
If the answer to those questions is no, then the next one should be: then what exactly are we doing here?
“Fine” is not supposed to be good enough, but in that answer was tacit acknowledgement Man Utd exist to tread water.
Qualification for the Champions League is the only realistic expectation for the club after a decent but unspectacular window, and herein lies perhaps a new low point for the post-Fergie years; the subtle death of apathy.
Mediocrity is now so fully accepted that a Man Utd manager can take simple positives from a 2-2 draw at Everton and declare his start, of four points from three, as “not that bad”.
In this moment, perhaps, Man Utd have left what we thought were their peak wilderness years and entered the true abyss; have stopped screaming, stopped panicking, stopped lurching for the next ladder and just accepted their lot.
They are no longer newsworthy, although that might be a temporary relief if performances continue like this. Then again in this odd transitional year for the Premier League the most likely outcome is a breezy campaign and a top-five finish: profitable stasis, as the United board have for so long intended.
Carrick’s tenure already looks and feels almost exactly like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s, but a basic tactical model of Ferguson-esque 4-4-2 – sit behind the ball, win your battles, improvise in the final third – just doesn’t cut it at the elite level anymore, and already Man Utd seem destined to repeat the Solskjaer cycle in its entirety.
Already, in just three games of 2026/27, we’ve had the stunning away defeat, hammering a promoted club at home, and getting dragged into a gruelling scrap at a tough mid-table ground.
That’s the Solskjaer model in three easy steps.
Arsenal’s gap between titles was 22 years, Liverpool’s 30, and although it feels like so much longer United are only currently on 13.
At the same stage of their barren spells Arsenal were taking one last lunge under Arsene Wenger, led by Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil, while Liverpool were toiling under Gerard Houllier. Both clubs finished fifth in their 13th year, both were nowhere near the conversation, both essentially operated with a shrug of the shoulders. United are right on track.
Appointing Carrick was a move that signalled Man Utd are not nearing the end of their drought but accepting its inevitably. Buckle up for another round of disappointment. We might only be halfway through.
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