Michael Carrick's Vision for Manchester United's Climb
Michael Carrick knows exactly what the summit looks like. He lived there for a decade in a Manchester United shirt. Now he’s trying to drag the club back up the mountain from the dugout.
A five-time Premier League champion as a player, Carrick is clear-eyed about the size of the task. United have not lifted the title since he was still anchoring their midfield, and 13 years on the gap to the very top remains sizeable.
He calls it a “jump”. He refuses to call it impossible.
United want their 21st league crown on the board by the time the club celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2028. Carrick, made permanent head coach in May after steering them to third place last season in testing circumstances, is determined that last year’s return to the Champions League is a starting point, not a high-water mark.
“We want to evolve as a team,” he said ahead of Saturday’s lunchtime trip to promoted Hull. The word “evolve” matters here. This isn’t a short-term grab at respectability. It’s a long-term climb.
Carrick leans heavily into the youth around him. “We’ve got a lot of younger players in the group that we want to help move forward individually, which collectively will move us in a good direction,” he explained. Winning, he insists, has to become a habit, not a surprise.
“The experiences that they’ve had, the habit in getting used to feeling what it’s like to win a number of games is huge. It’s huge for players at this club to feel it and know what it takes, first of all, and what you’ve got to put into it to get out the other end.”
Champions League qualification remains non-negotiable. Carrick doesn’t dress it up. “Yeah, we want to be finishing in the Champions League again without doubt. It’s a challenge, it’s a big challenge. There’s a lot of teams fighting for that position and we managed to do that last season and we’ve got to aim to do the same and then keep pushing on through the season to see how it develops.”
He wants his team to attack the campaign in phases: start fast, survive and thrive through the winter, finish with a surge. “We want to start strong, we want to get through the winter months and we want to be strong and we want to finish strong,” he said. “So it’s putting it all together and then see where we end up but we’re going into it with a lot of encouragement.”
If United are to turn encouragement into something more tangible, the heart of the pitch will decide it.
The midfield has been ripped up and re-laid. Casemiro, so influential last season, has gone. Manuel Ugarte is sidelined. In their place, Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos have arrived to reshape the core, while United continue to work on a deal for Brighton’s Carlos Baleba.
Carrick, who spent his playing career dictating games from that very area, knows the stakes. He likes the balance he sees, but he is not pretending the job is done.
“I think it gives you the foundation of the team,” he said of the midfield. “I think the foundation of the team is important to be consistent, to be consistent through one game from start to finish, to be consistent over a period of time.”
He wants a spine that doesn’t bend when the pressure comes. “I think you need a solid foundation through the middle of the team and trying putting it together and getting that balance. But certainly I think if you look at all the top teams over the years, all the great teams over the years, the spine of the team is really strong, so we’re conscious of that and I think we’ve got a good spine of the team right now.”
From there, he believes, everything else can grow. “We can keep improving as we go in different ways and coaching and helping the boys and developing them, and I think we’re in a good place.”
The question now is whether “a good place” becomes the launchpad for something greater, or just another staging post on a journey United have been stuck on for far too long.
