Michael Carrick's permanent reign is repeating Solskjaer's pattern, not fixing it
A promising interim spell has unravelled into Manchester United's worst Premier League start, a 4-1 Champions League rout by Como and a pressing row with captain Bruno Fernandes.
Manchester United's worst-ever start to a Premier League season has arrived with uncomfortable symmetry: the same caretaker-to-permanent arc, the same early promise, the same swift collapse once the full-time contract was signed.
Michael Carrick took interim charge in January after Ruben Amorim's departure and won 11 of 16 games, a 68.75% win rate with just two defeats, according to Planet Football. That run secured Champions League qualification and a two-year contract in May.
Director of football Jason Wilcox praised the fit at the time, telling the club Carrick had shown "an approach which aligns with the club's values, traditions and history" and had "forged a strong bond with the players," Planet Football reported.
The numbers mirror Solskjaer's own honeymoon
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer followed an almost identical path after replacing Jose Mourinho in 2018/19: 14 wins from 19 games, a 73.68% win rate, before a three-year contract was confirmed in March 2019, per Planet Football.
Carrick's first game as permanent manager was a 3-0 win at Brighton on the final day of last season. Solskjaer's was a 2-1 home win over Watford. Both were followed, in Solskjaer's case, by a run of defeats to Wolves, Everton and Manchester City.
United have now taken just seven points from their opening seven Premier League fixtures, lost two of three Champions League group games and gone out of the Carabao Cup after a 3-2 home defeat to Brighton, Planet Football reported. The pattern of early goodwill curdling into results that look identical to the regime United replaced is now explicit, and it raises the same question that eventually ended Solskjaer's tenure: whether an interim bounce built on relief and momentum was ever evidence of a sustainable structure.
Como exposed a pressing structure nobody trusted
The clearest symptom arrived on Wednesday, when United were beaten 4-1 by Como, a club that was in Italy's fourth tier as recently as 2019 and were playing only their third-ever European fixture, The Analyst reported. Nico Paz was the dominant figure as Como took the game apart.
Bruno Fernandes used his post-match interview with TNT Sports to criticise the approach, saying it was "a decision from the staff to not press man to man and sometimes leave space behind and try to get the ball, but sometimes when you give too much [of] the ball to these teams they get confidence."
Asked directly whether Carrick had got his tactics wrong, Fernandes replied: "That's on the manager and staff to see it, not me. Sometimes you have to be more brave under pressure, take the risk of pressing high and making them uncomfortable."
Carrick's reply was pointed in its own way. He noted that "we half pressed man-to-man in the second half and ended up conceding a goal from that," implying the high-press approach Fernandes wanted had already been tried and had backfired, per The Analyst.
That exchange captures the structural problem better than the result alone. A coordinated man-to-man press only works if every outfield player commits to following his opponent; a half press, where some players step out and others hold a zonal line, leaves exactly the kind of gaps between the lines that a technical side like Como, built around Paz dropping into pockets, can exploit.
Fernandes became the problem he was describing
The Analyst's reporting suggests Fernandes was not simply a frustrated bystander. He was repeatedly seen sprinting at Como's defenders and goalkeeper alone, well ahead of his teammates, before throwing his arms up when the press broke down around him.
That is the paradox worth drawing out. A single player pressing without the rest of the team stepping in unison does not apply pressure, it removes a body from United's defensive structure. Como could simply play around the lone presser, advance into the space he had vacated, and attack a team now shaped like neither a coordinated high press nor an organised mid-block.
Fernandes's complaint about the staff's caution was not wrong in principle, but his own conduct on the pitch illustrated precisely why an incomplete, individually-triggered press is often worse than a disciplined deeper block. Carrick's half-press compromise in the second half, by his own account, cost United a goal too, which suggests the issue runs deeper than a single tactical instruction.
United's next assignments will show whether Carrick can resolve that contradiction between a captain demanding boldness and a system that has punished every version of pressing tried so far, permanent contract or not.