Manchester United go back to the future.
Gustave Flaubert once wrote that anticipation is the purest form of pleasure. The most reliable kind. Reality, he argued, will always disappoint, but the things that never happened to you would never dim…they would always be engraved in your heart with a sort of sweet sadness. Now, we’re not saying Jim has Madame Bovary on his nightstand, but he must be channeling Flaubert. How else do you explain this Marty McFly moment, firing up the DeLorean and hurtling back to resurrect the greatest managerial stint in Manchester United history?
Three games. Two wins. One of them against Arteta’s Arsenal (wonder what happened to them). Then, just like that, the reign was over. Jim can’t have been the only one wondering, what if? Well, wonder no more. Michael Carrick is now the manager of Manchester United Football Club. And not just for three games. We think.
We called it. Not in a vague, “maybe they’ll do this” way, but in a full-on, website-proclaimed prophecy kind of way. The warning signs were everywhere. We wrote it, we shouted it, we somehow manifested it into the ether: Manchester United would attempt to replace Ruben Amorim with the cast of the Overlap, or, a former legend. They went for the latter. Michael Carrick edging out Ole, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Tom Cleverley, Darron Gibson and Bebé to the role.
The club who couldn’t find a midfield spine after Michael Carrick, who burned through tacticians like tissues in a storm, has now appointed the very same Michael Carrick who, ironically, was the midfielder they’ve been missing all along. It’s like tearing the house apart looking for your car keys, only to realise they’ve been in your pocket the whole time, and now they’re driving you to work.
Carrick isn’t exactly a bumbling wildcard. At Middlesbrough he built a team that played the kind of modern football Manchester United have been craving for years, calm, patient, possession heavy, occasionally interspersed with lightening transitions and fast attacks. Every pass measured, every touch deliberate. And yes, his Middlesbrough side eventually fell victim to the law of diminishing returns. Goals didn’t always arrive towards the end of his time there, but how much of that was down to player churn as top talents were lured away, is hard to say.
The hope? That with a more technically gifted squad, a touch more stability, and fewer club-induced headaches (if only), Carrick’s measured approach may translate well to Old Trafford. His first spell as interim didn’t look half bad, did it? A few wins, a smattering of clean sheets, a whiff of calmness in a sea of Old Trafford hysteria.
For better or worse, the Middlesbrough exit is now a United entrance.
Welcome to the next chapter. It’s ironic. It’s chaotic. And, of course, it’s Manchester United.
