Few individuals are better positioned than Mike Phelan to evaluate Michael Carrick’s tenure thus far at Manchester United and how the club’s former player and coach can restore stability at Old Trafford.
Phelan, who also enjoyed a playing career at United, served as Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant between 2008 and 2013, having worked as a first-team coach for the seven years before that, before returning to the club in December 2018 to support Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
His spell alongside Ferguson delivered three Premier League titles, two League Cups, a Club World Cup and a Champions League final appearance, while he remains convinced United were progressing in the right direction before Solskjaer’s departure in November 2021.
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And he believes Carrick possesses the character to handle the mounting pressure as he confronts the first genuine crisis of his managerial tenure: Michael’s steely.
“Michael’s got enough about him to know what that looks like and feels like, he’s been there, he’s seen it, he’s done it,” Phelan said, reports the Manchester Evening News.
“The question is now, can he and his staff produce that in the building? Knowing him, he wants those glory days of fast, flowing, attacking football, but the mentality of the group could be cautious, and it’s a case of how do you get that message across?
“Michael had that great run. Now everybody will have an opinion on how that happened; it could be the players, it could be the management, it could be that change, that mood, everything.
“But ultimately, now that it has settled, there has to be a real direction of play. To be honest, they’ve lost grounding in that, but it certainly can come back.”
Phelan is left questioning whether the contemporary United is primed for success. He feels the strategy post-Ferguson’s exit has been “absolute pandemonium” at times, fostering a culture that “creates turmoil”.
Life was simpler when the ex-United defender rejoined the club 2001. By then, Sir Alex was indisputably the man steering the entire club, with David Gill as his right-hand man. They made swift decisions, but by the time Phelan came back, he felt the power dynamics had shifted.
“I felt as though there was a lot more talk, a little less action, in a world that I’d probably grown up in where ultimately big decision-makers were all in the room and you come out of a place with a decision, ‘this is what we’re going to do, this is how we’re going to do it, are we all behind it, yeah, let’s go for it’.
“It shifted more towards, ‘let’s think about it, let’s just develop this a little bit more’ and all that, and I just thought there were sometimes too many people in the room. It just felt as though there was more people to answer to, which was what was created since I left.
“I had the beauty of seeing both sides and I know the one I really enjoyed and the one that I thought was going to be difficult, hard work, difficult to get those messages across. I found it frustrating.”
Phelan was present at Old Trafford for United’s Champions League thrashing of Sabah and has observed other fixtures on television. Even against the Azerbaijani minnows in a match Carrick’s team won 4-0, he remained troubled by how exposed they appeared defensively.
As you might anticipate from someone so deeply connected to the Ferguson years , and even the lightning counter-attacking style United deployed under Solskjaer, Phelan remains unconvinced about their tempo.
“I still personally think they play slowly,” he said. “When I’ve watched them occasionally, not full games, but there’s quite a predictability about the slow build-up, and then it quickens up and then there’s a blast of pace. I think that frustrates a lot of people.”
Phelan offers fascinating insight into Carrick as a manager. Having operated as a tracksuited assistant under Ferguson, the seasoned coach adopted a more distant approach under Solskjaer.
Carrick and Kieran McKenna were two innovative coaches with fresh ideas, leading many of the training sessions. Despite facing a fair share of criticism during Solskjaer’s tenure, their individual achievements lend weight to Phelan’s assertion that they are exceptional coaches.
“[Michael] was very studious. From my previous time with Sir Alex, the laptop became a coaching tool and Michael fit into that bracket,” he said. “Michael was always a thinker; you could see that in his playing style. He understood the game well enough to be able to plot and plan sessions.
“There was him and Kieran McKenna already there, and they were both of the same sort of mould, it was this new modern coach, a different way of thinking. And technology was in, and I think those two coaches embraced that, and they came up with some really good, interesting work, quite intense work.
“I would say Michael didn’t come across as intense as Kieran, but Michael had the playing background to probably understand how deep to go and how not, how far you can take this. I think he had more of a playing mentality.
“Kieran was a good, good coach, and he’s obviously proved that. But they balanced each other out, and when we went back in, Ole and I, we allowed them the freedom to deliver that, and the players bought into that.”
For Phelan, there remains a lingering sense of disappointment over how the Solskjaer era concluded at United. League finishes of third and second across two full Premier League campaigns indicated that advancement was taking place, while a penalty shoot-out loss to Villarreal in the 2021 Europa League final continues to rankle.
He confesses to being “sometimes bored watching” that encounter in Gdansk from the touchline, with defeat arriving via spot-kicks that concluded when David De Gea blazed his effort wide. Phelan reckons triumph would have enabled the squad to “find out if they’ve got another level”, yet instead the conclusion arrived rather rapidly the following campaign.
Raphael Varane and Jadon Sancho arrived that summer, followed by Cristiano Ronaldo’s sensational return, with United sitting atop the table come September. However, things unravelled shortly afterwards, with heavy losses to Liverpool and Manchester City intensifying the scrutiny.
Watford’s 4-1 triumph at Vicarage Road in November sealed the fate, and Solskjaer was dismissed that very evening: “I always felt as though there was progress being made,” Phelan remarked. “I think there were some major decisions that were ahead, and that was down to the powers that be and the manager as to what that would look like. But I’m sure if those discussions were to be had, there would have been a few changes other than the manager.
“I did feel as though the trigger was pulled a little bit too sharply. That knee-jerk reaction was this isn’t going anywhere, which I thought it’s been going in the right direction for a long time.”
Phelan’s cryptic comments about significant decisions looming suggest that both United and Ronaldo need to adapt, given his transfer from Juventus has disrupted a tactical plan that was starting to yield results.
“To have the opportunity for a Cristiano Ronaldo to come into that dressing room was something really special,” he said. “I can remember listening to the players once they knew that Cristiano was coming back, it was euphoric.
“Senior professionals in that room were going, ‘wow, world class, got a world-class player coming to Man United again’, there was a definite lift, a buzz. Now the thing is, how do you manage that situation with a Cristiano, knowing that part of the development process Ole was putting in place was this, legs, running, high pressure, this type of thing.
“Whether you agree or disagree with having a Ronaldo in your team or not, somebody has to make that decision. There is a moment when a player has to realise you’re part of something, you’re not just the something.
“It was a case of fitting the jigsaw puzzle together. Ultimately, it didn’t see fruition, but I don’t think you could say that the decision on Ole came down to whether he brought Cristiano in or not.”
Carrick oversaw three first-team matches before departing when Ralf Rangnick arrived as interim manager, and while Phelan stayed on under the German’s leadership, he remains critical of the choice to make that appointment.
“A lot of things happened in a short period of time, which didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason behind it all,” he said. “A caretaker being brought in and I’m thinking, where does that fit into Manchester United Football Club, does Manchester United need a caretaker manager? And my opinion of that was no, go do what you have to do, get the person in that you want now.
“One of the things that it opened it up to was an outsider coming in and saying the things that he said, and ultimately, in hindsight, it’s probably been a positive. But at the moment you’re in it and you’re saying that, it’s probably a negative.”