Have Manchester United become the unmanageable club?
BBC Sport's Phil McNulty asks whether years of decay, decline and bad decisions have made Manchester United effectively unmanageable, with Michael Carrick the latest manager under pressure.
Michael Carrick is the latest Manchester United manager to be engulfed by the club's recurring crisis, with the team winless in seven games in all competitions, according to BBC Sport.
Carrick, a former fan favourite who did well in temporary charge, is the seventh full-time manager since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down in 2013 after winning 38 trophies. His predecessors — David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim — all eventually found the job impossible to tame, writes BBC chief football writer Phil McNulty.
There were days of success: Van Gaal won the FA Cup in 2016, and Mourinho lifted the League Cup and the Europa League in 2017. But the club's leaders, from former executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward to the ruling Glazer family and now part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, have 'failed miserably', according to the analysis.
Carrick is under pressure after poor results and internal dissent. He took aim at director of football Jason Wilcox following the Champions League defeat at Atletico Madrid, while captain Bruno Fernandes publicly questioned the tactics in Como — signs, McNulty writes, that 'something is rotten in the state of United'.
With regular fan protests against the Glazers, savage cost-cutting under Ratcliffe and overall debt still at £1bn, the analysis asks whether years of decay, decline and appalling decision-making have made United the unmanageable club.
Source: BBC News — Top Stories — TrendWire reports stories in its own words; facts should be confirmed against the original source.