Michael Carrick sacked as Manchester United head coach amid boardroom turmoil
Michael Carrick was sacked as Manchester United head coach on 12 November 2026 after managing just two wins from 12 matches this season and overseeing a league return of eight points from 10 games that left the club in the relegation zone. His dismissal came amid entrenched disagreements within the club’s football department and ownership structure.
Manchester United’s post‑Sir Alex Ferguson era is presented here as one of repeated questionable appointments and fractured decision‑making dating back to Ferguson’s retirement in 2013. Eddie Howe was initially a favourite to replace the 45‑year‑old Carrick before Mauricio Pochettino emerged as the chosen candidate; Howe had been Jason Wilcox’s pick to take over from Carrick and was also favoured by Dan Ashworth to follow Erik ten Hag after Ten Hag’s sacking in October 2024. Wilcox disagreed over the subsequent appointment, Sir Jim Ratcliffe went with Ruben Amorim, and Ashworth left in December only five months after joining, by which time Wilcox had been technical director; he is now described as United’s highest‑ranking football executive and powerbroker.
The football department is also led by Omar Berrada as chief executive and is characterised in the source material as a disjointed, illogical operation under Ratcliffe’s oversight. The argument advanced is that Carrick was handed a treacherous situation but nonetheless failed to manage it effectively, a responsibility the article asserts rests with any head coach. The piece contrasts Carrick’s approach with examples from previous United managers to illustrate the point about required managerial nous.
José Mourinho’s spell at United from May 2016 to December 2018 is used as an illustrative comparison, with Mourinho saying that guiding United to second place in 2017‑18 — with 81 points, 19 behind Manchester City — was one of his finest achievements. The account recalls Mourinho’s earlier successes, including breaking the United‑Arsenal duopoly to take Chelsea to consecutive titles in 2004‑05 and 2005‑06 and steering Inter to the 2009‑10 treble, and notes that Mourinho’s opening campaign at United concluded with the Carabao Cup and Europa League won.
An anecdote offered in the piece describes Mourinho using an off‑the‑record channel to send a message about a player he wanted removed; the article asserts Carrick would not have employed similar tactics. The source argues that Carrick lacked a necessary streetwise element to manage a fractious dressing room and to achieve results inside a compromised club structure.
Player unrest is cited as a concrete symptom: Lisandro Martínez, described as a de facto captain, criticised Wilcox’s recruitment after a 2‑0 defeat by Atlético Madrid, while Bruno Fernandes, identified as Carrick’s official leader, questioned tactics following a 4‑1 defeat at Como. Those incidents are presented as emblematic of a changing room in disorder, which coincided with elimination from the Carabao Cup and the poor league run noted above; the article also records that Carrick received a warm reception from the Stretford End after a 3‑0 loss to Bournemouth last month.
The piece places responsibility beyond any single coach, arguing that the underlying problems are structural: Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Jason Wilcox, Omar Berrada and the Glazer family are named as figures who would need to accept culpability, with the article noting Ratcliffe’s 29.4% ownership stake and asserting that Glazer family ownership since 2005 has left the club about £1.2bn in debt. It also recalls that Louis van Gaal was sacked the day after winning the 2016 FA Cup, an example used to show recurring boardroom failings.
The account criticises the manner of Carrick’s exit as agonising and overlong: it states that Wilcox and Berrada would recommend to Ratcliffe that Carrick should be removed on Monday evening, yet days passed during which Carrick still took training and it emerged a deal for Pochettino was being finalised. The article concludes that the next manager will have to grapple with the same deep structural faults that the piece identifies as undermining the modern Manchester United.