A sharp divide has opened among former Manchester United figures over whether Michael Carrick should be given the job as permanent manager after an encouraging interim spell. Rio Ferdinand has publicly defended Carrick while Gary Neville and Roy Keane remain unconvinced.<\/p>\n
Carrick\u2019s start was notable: successive wins arrived inside his first 12 days in charge, and he needed only two games\u2014against the best two teams in the country\u2014to register them. That rapid impact is being measured against the recent tenure of Ruben Amorim, who took 11 months and 35 games to record consecutive league wins. Amorim\u2019s run eventually became three straight victories as United beat Sunderland, Liverpool and Brighton & Hove Albion back-to-back-to-back in October, but he did not repeat that sequence.<\/p>\n
Off the back of the Manchester derby, the Arsenal result left Keane unmoved. Keane remains clear that short-term form will not change his view on the permanent appointment. \u201cI think if United win every game from now until the end of the season, I still wouldn\u2019t be giving him the job. I just think they need a bigger, more experienced manager. Simple as that,\u201d Keane stated on Sky Sports. \u201cI don\u2019t believe he\u2019s the man to get Manchester United back winning league titles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neville accepted the improvement on the pitch but argued the club has acted emotionally before. \u201cManchester United have acted emotionally a number of times in the last 12 years,\u201d he said. \u201cI honestly could not be happier with the last two weeks. The familiarity in what I\u2019m watching feels like I\u2019m watching my team play again properly. They played properly, with intensity. I think it\u2019s right that Carrick keeps the job until the end of the season and then hands the baton over to [Thomas] Tuchel or [Carlo] Ancelotti, someone of that world-class ilk.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is context to the caution: Ole Gunnar Solskj\u00e6r produced strong interim numbers but ultimately did not deliver major trophies. Ferdinand, who shared a dressing room with Carrick for longer than Neville, pushed back hard on the sceptics. \u201cMichael Carrick\u2019s come in, turned the collar up on his long trench coat and said: \u2018Listen guys, get behind me, I\u2019m gonna put you in a structure that\u2019s going to actually suit the players that we have, we\u2019re going to be hard to play against, we\u2019re going work hard, and we\u2019re going be a threat. And, by the way, my first two games are Man City and Arsenal,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s gone and got six points and people are telling me that, no matter what Michael Carrick does, he shouldn\u2019t get the opportunity to manage Man Utd,\u201d the retired defender exclaimed in disbelief.<\/p>\n
The debate now centres on whether the early momentum and internal structure Carrick has offered are sufficient to outweigh concerns about experience and long-term ambition. Carrick himself remains \u201cnot bothered\u201d by the dispute, and the camp has also endured a revived personal jab, with his wife described as a \u201cbig mouth\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick’s short run sparks division: Ferdinand defends, Keane and Neville sceptical over permanence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1348,969],"tags":[1021,1379,1087],"class_list":["post-6296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-manchester-united-news","category-premier-league","tag-amorim","tag-club-structure","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}