Carrick has made turnaround look easy – it was anything but

Today (Friday), Michael Carrick has been named as the Premier League's Manager of the Month for January 2026. And, though it’s only 31 days since he returned to Old Trafford, his dramatic appointment as head coach already feels about as distant as the Battle of Hastings.

 

United are happily in fourth place. The form team in the league. Happiness abounds, so fans, pundits and everyone else must look to the future for something newsworthy, something tasty – not what happened two weeks ago, let alone a month.

 

Could United finish in the top three? Will Bruno Fernandes break the Premier League assists record? Who might be signed in the summer? The narrative never rests, because United is the most spellbinding story in world football. I'm biased, of course – but it is. And it has been for many decades.

 

But today is a good time to just stop. To park what may or may not be coming in the weeks and months ahead, and celebrate this small but significant achievement by Carrick, his coaching staff and, of course, his players.

 

Because what they produced during the second half of January was astonishing. And we should not forget that, or the dramatic circumstances, no matter how much the world might crave fresh plot lines.

Let’s rewind the tape and remember: United started 2026 with two draws and a crushing defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion in the Emirates FA Cup. The latter confirmed that 2025/26 would be our shortest full season, in terms of games played, for 111 years.

 

With no European football, and immediate exits from both domestic cups, several supporters I spoke to felt the season was pretty much over. Reds everywhere were desperately looking around for some hope, and there didn’t seem to be any available.

 

We were managerless. On a run of just one win in seven games. Even worse, the next two fixtures were the Manchester derby and a trip to north London to face the best team in the country, Arsenal, who had not lost at home all season.

 

Carrick had spent the early part of the new year holidaying with Wayne Rooney and friends in Barbados. A week later, he was in situ at United, with expectations probably at their lowest level since the mid-1970s.

 

The mood was on the floor. Lower than a snake's belly. Forty-five minutes before the derby kicked off – Carrick’s first match in charge – one of my City-supporting mates tweeted:

“WE WILL SMASH THESE.”

Gulp. Inside the Stretford End, we didn't know what to expect.

 

What we got, incredibly, was United's best performance in a Manchester derby for maybe 20 years. And I don't think that's an exaggeration.

We've snagged plenty of wins against Pep Guardiola over the years – most famously in the 2024 FA Cup final – but, let's be honest, they were never achieved with the level of authority Carrick's lads showed on 17 January.

Unbelievably, the only frustration at full-time was that we'd not put five past them. It wouldn't have been undeserved. The ball was in the net five times, and some of the combination play was smoother than a Sade single.

 

At Arsenal, Carrick and co did it again. Despite going behind, despite conceding an 84th-minute equaliser, the Geordie didn't blink. Even at 2-1 up, he'd sent on Benjamin Sesko for the injured Patrick Chinazaekpere Dorgu. The message was clear: keep on attacking, maintain positive intent. 

 

Arsenal quickly levelled, but that proactive attitude soon struck gold, when substitutes Sesko and Cunha collaborated with Mainoo and Fernandes to create the winner. Arsenal hadn't conceded three goals at home since 2023.

 

The stunning stats kept on coming. My old mucker Steve Bartram – a former United employee – noted that United hadn't beaten the Premier League's top two in successive games since 2002.

 

On the pitch, the football was confident, the shape was compact and the players vivacious. What had Carrick done or said to manifest this staggering volte-face?

Only those in the inner sanctum of the United dressing room know the real, unfiltered answer to that one. But we know Carrick ‘touched’ the heart of Lisandro Martinez. Senne Lammens hailed the clear plans and communication. Bruno Fernandes revealed that he had sensed Carrick would become a great head coach as far as back as 2021, when Michael led us for three games following the departure of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

 

But there is surely much more. After the derby, Martinez noted how Carrick had urged the players to ‘use the energy of the people’, which the Reds did deliciously via aggressive, physical tete-a-tetes with Bernardo Silva, Erling Haaland and others.

 

I’ll admit that has been a frustration of mine in recent times: that we don’t engage Old Trafford as much as we could. There’s 70,000-plus Reds there, itching to get off their seats, and it doesn’t always take beautiful football to do it.

We’re Mancs, and this is the club of Nobby Stiles, Remi Moses and Roy Keane – if the opposition are outplaying us, make sure they don’t outfight us. Show spirit and personality, and M16 will back you until its last breath. Against City (and Fulham and Spurs) we did that.

 

There’s that nice blend in the dugout too, where the colossal experience of Steve Holland is complemented by the diverse voices of Travis Binnion, Jonny Evans and Jonathan Woodgate.

 

You can also see huge togetherness: in the way substitutes have come on desperate to contribute; in the way even unused subs are part of the goal celebrations; Casemiro jumping on Carrick’s back after the disallowed Mount goal against City (before it had been disallowed, obviously).

When Michael was a player here, me and a few mates jokingly nicknamed him ‘The Rebel MC’ – a nod to the 1980s UK rapper. The joke being, of course, that Carrick the footballer was not a rebel or edgy in any discernible way. He was an elegant passer of the ball, an astute reader of the game, as reliable as the AA… but the only thing fierce about him was his intelligence.

 

Nine years on, we can see the same qualities embedded in his coaching: intelligent, astute, modest, reliable. And perhaps there’s more evidence of one or two things that some fans overlooked during his playing days: bravery and steel. 

 

Back then, bravery was usually associated with tackling and aggression, but Carrick showed it in other ways – in taking the ball under pressure, in making the right decisions for the team and not bending to the expectations of others. As a head coach, he has done similarly, and with the same lack of fuss and ego.

He has answered the call of his beloved former club and done it marvellously. And while some mock talk of ‘United DNA’ – which, incidentally, comes from external voices like ex-players and journalists, in the main – Carrick has shown how powerful it can be when the first team’s style and attitude connects with a few principles that supporters can relate to.

 

Ultimately, it is down to results, and that’s why we are celebrating Michael, his staff and his squad today. But results are surely so much easier to find when players and fans come together and show a mutual feeling for what Manchester United can be, at it best.

 

You don’t need to be a United legend to lead this club, but you need to understand it. And few understand it better than a man who was at the heart of arguably the greatest United team of all.

The opinions in this story are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Manchester United Football Club.