Manchester United are being tipped to appoint club legend Michael Carrick as manager should they part ways with Erik ten Hag.
Carrick has spent two years managing Middlesbrough in the Championship, steering them to a play-off semi-final last season, and former Everton CEO Keith Wyness believes he is the man for the United job.
Speaking on Football Insider’s Inside Track podcast, Wyness addressed the rumours around United’s next boss and noted there are two paths the club could take.
He said: “There are various rumours whether they will go for like a Thomas Tuchel, or will it be a Michael Carrick and have more of a managerial coach type situation rather than a Tuchel type bigger name.
“I think they might go for the second route and try and get the Man United ethos back to what it was before with an ex-player like Carrick managing the squad. He’s proven to be a very good manager, so that’s where I think they may go.”
Should Carrick find himself in the Old Trafford hotseat he would look to carry on the unbeaten streak he started as caretaker manager after Ole Gunnar Solksjaer was sacked in 2021.
Across three games in November and December, Carrick’s United won 2-0 at Villareal in the Champions League before a 1-1 draw at Chelsea and a 3-2 home win over Arsenal helped stop the Premier League rot.
He left United with immediate effect after the Arsenal game, making way for Ralf Rangnick to muddle through to the end of an immensely disappointing season.
Wyness noted that “no-one knows at the moment which way [Sir Jim] Ratcliffe is going to jump” with the managerial situation, especially since Ten Hag seems to have survived his latest scare – a high-level meeting of the United hierarchy on Tuesday.
“They are starting to reap the rewards of a very bad, difficult off-season when everybody thought Ten Hag was going to be sacked, so all these sorts of things are coming home to roost.”
Certainly the pressure has never been higher on the Dutchman, who might have done just enough with a 3-3 draw at Porto and goalless draw at Aston Villa to hold onto his job a little while longer.
But there’s no shortage of names being linked with the role should the axe eventually fall – Tuchel is high on the list of possible replacements, and Sporting Lisbon’s Ruben Amorim is reported to have entered contention.
Featured image George Wood via Getty Images
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