We want to be: Michael Carrick fuels growing Man United doubts with baffling tactical admission

Back in 2022, Erik ten Hag was asked how he wanted his Manchester United team to play. He said:

“We want to play a proactive style of football. We are brave and willing to have the ball, to give each other options. But also off the ball, to get the pressing style is what we’re working for together.”

When asked the same question, his successor Ruben Amorim consistently insisted on building an identity, sticking rigidly to his 3-4-3 system and demanding that his team press and run “like mad dogs.”

However, despite both coaches seemingly wanting their teams to have a certain identity, fans and pundits ultimately accused them of eroding United’s identity instead.

Demand for a return to the Manchester United way

So it made sense to go for Michael Carrick, a man who understood United’s DNA: fast, entertaining, attacking and aggressive football, combined with a deep commitment to developing and promoting young players.

Therefore, when journalists ask Carrick how his team should play, fans surely expect him to talk of entertaining, attacking and aggressive football.

Yet in a recent interview on Sky Sports, Carrick made some interesting, and rather coy, claims about how he actually wants his team to play.

“I quite like the fact that someone can’t work out the identity, to be honest, because that means you’re unpredictable,” Carrick said.

“So, from an attacking sense, we want to be unpredictable, you know? We don’t want to be able to read what we’re going to do next or what our main strength is.

“I think if we can if we can do a good number of things well, and we can attack from different areas and different ways, for me, I’d rather have a team that does that.”

Carrick piles more pressure on himself

Most fans will be left baffled by these admissions, and rightfully so.

Given the pressure Carrick is already under, with only one win in the league from four games and an early Carabao Cup exit, this interview offered him a chance to sell his ideas.

Hope is everything. For Carrick, this interview was a chance to build that hope: to show fans how he ultimately wants United to play, so that, even if they lose to Fulham, they can see he is building something and gauge how far along the process is.

Yet by failing to explain how he wants his team to play, and offering fans only the promise of being “unpredictable,” Carrick piles unnecessary extra pressure on himself.

As a result, fans will keep questioning whether he has the tactical acumen to turn this team into a fierce side capable of frightening opponents.

Featured image by Carl Recine via Getty Images