Neville says sacking Carrick will not fix United; Owen calls the next two days “pivotal”

Manchester United’s 4-4 draw with Aston Villa on Sunday left Michael Carrick’s side in the relegation zone going into the international break, and it split the pundits on the only question that matters at Old Trafford: does the manager’s future decide anything?

Neville: the manager is not the problem

Gary Neville, speaking on NBC, refused to treat a sacking as a cure. “You can keep changing the manager and thinking that’s going to be the answer, but the reality is this has been proven over eight managers in 12 years, that’s not the answer,” he said, as reported by Football365. “So Michael could leave, Michael might stay, we don’t know, the ownership haven’t got a clue what to do.”

Neville’s case is structural. He named Ruben Amorim, Erik ten Hag, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Jose Mourinho, Louis van Gaal, David Moyes, Ralf Rangnick and Carrick himself, and argued that a club will fail “if you’ve not got an aligned leadership from top to bottom”, from the board and ownership down to the pitch. He also said some people in senior positions “have never done those jobs before”. Immediately after the match he was blunter about the afternoon itself: “This just can’t go on, can it? It’s absolutely desperate.”

Owen: the next two days are pivotal

Michael Owen, on Premier League Productions, took the other side of the ledger. He did not say Carrick should go, but he thinks the owners will act quickly. “I think the next couple of days are going to be pivotal,” Owen said, and he added that “going into the international break in the relegation zone just doesn’t have a good ring to it, does it?” (Football365).

Yet Owen’s own assessment was generous to the manager. “They’re fighting for him, they’re absolutely fighting for him,” he said, and he argued that Carrick “has gotten a tune out of these players” and that “He’s not lost the dressing room”. That is the awkward part for anyone who wants a change: the case against Carrick is the table, while the case for him is the way his players respond.

Keane: warm on the fight, cold on the interview

Roy Keane, on Sky Sports, split the difference. “On the one hand, you say dreadful to give up four goals at home, but they kept going, so we have to give them a little bit of praise,” was his verdict on the players, who twice recovered from two goals down. He was far less taken with Carrick’s post-match television interview: “He talks a lot but doesn’t say much – maybe that’s a tactic. He’s like a politician” (Football360). Keane had spoken about the job itself last week, which we covered in his comments on the United job.

The context

Villa led 2-0 inside four minutes and 4-2 after 53, before Joshua Zirkzee scored in the 92nd minute and Patrick Dorgu levelled in the 96th. United have won once in ten league games. Carrick was asked directly in his Sky Sports interview whether he could walk away and answered: “It’s not going to happen, no.” Liverpool at Anfield on 22 November is the first league test after the break.

The three views are less opposed than they look. Neville and Owen agree that the squad is playing for Carrick and that the club has been here before; they differ on whether that history makes a change pointless or overdue. Keane questions the communication but not the effort. For the neutral, the sharpest line is Neville’s: if eight managers in 12 years have not solved it, the next appointment is only as good as the structure behind it. We looked at the earlier row over Bruno Fernandes and the manager in Carragher and Morrison’s defence of Carrick, and that argument now looks like the easy part of the story.

Whether INEOS act this week or not, Neville’s test is the one worth keeping: judge the decision by what it changes above the manager, not by who is standing on the touchline.