International break nears as managers face scrutiny after Manchester United comeback
As the international break approaches, Manchester United produced a comeback against Roma and at the final whistle Michael Carrick seemed unsure what to do. The impending pause to club football has become a moment when hierarchies contemplate managerial changes.
What used to be a time to reset is now a time to rehire, and Michael Carrick is not the only Premier League manager looking over his shoulder. You will have heard every pundit mention the hierarchy waiting for the international break to make the call. Perhaps Sim Jim Ratcliffe saw how much content Manchester City gave us in the previous one and wants the column inches.
The camera focused on Michael Carrick, who shook the hand of Gian Piero Gasperini before looking around trying to remember what you’re meant to do after a victory. The shot then cut to the director of football, Jason Wilcox, and chief executive, Omar Berrada, clapping with two of the most ashen faces you could imagine. There are rules about smiling when you are involved with a failing football club, and Christopher Vivell, described as having borrowed Rodri’s cloak of invisibility, has so far been hard to spot.
United’s turnaround contained a heavy dose of fortune: a soft penalty missed and retaken, a wild miskick and Roma missing a hatful of chances before the break. It is unlikely that the penalty is Carrick’s Mark Robins/Adrian Heath moment, but win at home against Aston Villa on Sunday and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he turns the season around. It is also not beyond the realms of possibility that United are so badly run that they get a lucky win over Villa, stick with Carrick and revert to what we’ve seen and end up surviving Spurs-style on the last day.
There are realistically five managers who may not be in place when we all return. From the bottom up: Régis Le Bris at Sunderland, who host good-at-attacking-bad-at-defending Chelsea on Sunday. Qualify for Europe for the first time in more than 50 years, fail to recruit adequately, then chuck out the manager who achieved that success; but if Bromley can get rid of Andy Woodman, anything is possible. A friend recently took a posh taxi in Yarm that had No 34 embroidered into all the seats, plus three screens and the night sky on the ceiling; if Granit Xhaka is selling his personalised Renault Espace, perhaps Le Bris has lost the dressing room.
In 19th position: Oliver Glasner and Nottingham Forest. His “too many compromises” comments have raised questions about whether he is referring to the players or to the looming presence in the directors’ box, whether Evangelos Marinakis is insisting on taking the rondos, or whether Glasner has spent months telling Liam Delap to take a bit off it while Delap persists in using every bit of his “shot power – 99”.
In 18th: Pierre Sage at Crystal Palace. No one watched how good Lens were last season under Sage and they appear worse now if shipping 9 (nine) at home to Como is anything to go by, and Palace have sold a lot of good players and replaced them with not as good players. And then there’s Matthias Jaissle at Newcastle; could defeat at Fulham spell the end for him? The common theme appears to be selling the spine of a team and expecting a new guy to deliver, and Jaissle has a good reputation but even Geordies still completely invested in the PIF project probably didn’t watch too many of his Al-Ahli games over the past three years.
All the while Sean Dyche’s agent is cartwheeling around a golf club in the East Midlands adding zeros to his next deal, and we are left with five managers on the brink, all ready for a massive payout for not doing a great job – something the author says he has been attempting to get for 20 years of mid-level broadcasting, sadly to no avail. The international break is the moment many clubs have been waiting for to make their decisions, with Nottingham Forest’s tricky home game with Manchester City late on Saturday afternoon standing out as one immediate moment before that pause.
