Michael Carrick was an outstanding player for @ManUtd and last season was asked to rescue the club after they sacked a manager who was an appalling fit for the Utd. He did that so well that the senior management almost had no option but to hire him on a ‘permanent’ (should any football manager’s contract ever be called that?!) basis. However, the same senior management spectacularly failed, once again, to back the manager in the transfer market and the team now comprises very few players who are good enough to wear the shirt. These are players who are being paid £150-300k or more per week and yet don’t seem to put in the effort required. The vast majority of fans would get behind the players if they could see that they were trying their best and giving everything they had in each game. Hardly any of this outfit do that. Can any Utd fan ever imagine saying that about players such as Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Denis Irwin, Carrick himself, Mark Hughes, Peter Schmeichel, Rio, Eric, Wayne Rooney and Sir Bobby? These players never left anything out there and gave their all every time they pulled on the shirt. Some of them weren’t the most talented players in the team but they were all hard workers and wouldn’t have allowed the others around them to just give up and accept defeat. That’s where the spirit of the club and ‘Fergie Time’ came from. Utd is never going to be an easy club to manage purely because of its size and the expectation of the fans. But the manager needs the backing of the board and control of operations and player purchase in addition to being a coach and it is this regard that Michael Carrick has been let down by the current senior management team who have made some awful decisions by removing a large number of committed back room staff, not buying players who are good enough to be at Utd and treating the whole operation as a company and not a football club. Manchester United is and always has been far more than a business, as have many other very large and successful teams around the world. Unfortunately, this board and this senior management team will probably sack Michael Carrick in the near future. He has done very little wrong and an awful lot of good with the relatively limited resources (by that I mean players) at his disposal. Replacing him won’t solve the problem. It will just pass it on to another manager who, unless they are properly backed, will unfortunately probably suffer the same fate. It is the attitude of the board and probably some of the personnel at that level which need to change. But we all know that rarely happens and they use the manager as a scapegoat instead. The fans made their opinions very well known at the end of the game today. They all support Carrick. They are appalled at most of the players and the senior management. They all need to look themselves in the mirror and decide if they really want Utd to get back to the levels they were a few years ago, or if they are actually just concerned about how much money they make…. Carrick is a Utd legend, rightly so. If he loses his job in the next few days/weeks he should hold his head high as he will have done the best he can with very poor support and backing from above.