There is a particular kind of footballing disaster that arrives looking like success. Manchester United's 2025-26 season under Michael Carrick was precisely that: a run of results so untethered from the underlying reality of the team's performances that anyone with access to a basic data model could see the reckoning coming. They topped the Premier League during Carrick's 17-match interim spell last season. They won eight games by a single goal. They outperformed their expected points total by 12.7, a margin 7.6 greater than any other club in the division. And then, as mathematics always insists on reminding us, the bill came due.
Third-Best on Paper, Sixteenth in the Real World
Start with the headline number that cuts both ways. Since Carrick took charge, only Arsenal and Manchester City have accumulated more Premier League points than United, with 57 and 56 respectively to United's 46. On that basis alone, Carrick's position should be comfortable. It is anything but, and the reason tells you everything about the gap between raw points tallies and what those points actually represent.
Because context is everything. That points haul was built largely on the back of last season's improbable run, one propped up by fortune and a schedule that suited United down to the ground. Fast forward to the current campaign and United sit 16th with no win in eight games across all competitions. Three-goal defeats to Como and Bournemouth sit alongside narrow, flattering losses elsewhere. Topping a table during a honeymoon spell means nothing when the structural problems that were always lurking have now surfaced completely.
Luck Is Not a Strategy
The outperformance figure of 12.7 expected points deserves to be dwelt upon, because it is genuinely staggering. That is the distance between where United's underlying numbers said they should be and where the actual results put them. No other club was within 7.6 points of that gap. What that means, in plain terms, is that United were winning matches they had no statistical right to win, repeatedly, over a sustained period.
Eight of their 12 league wins under Carrick last season came by a single goal. In five of those eight, the expected goal margin in United's favour was no more than 0.6. They lost the xG battle in draws at West Ham and Sunderland. These were not controlled, disciplined victories squeezed out through tactical excellence. They were coin flips that kept landing heads. Any football back office paying serious attention to data would have known that kind of run was not a foundation to build on. The question of whether United's back office was paying that attention is one nobody in charge there will want to answer.
The Solskjaer Shadow
What makes this current crisis particularly grim is how familiar it looks. United are leading the Premier League for shots this season, yet no team has a higher proportion of their efforts coming from outside the penalty area. Their non-penalty expected goals per shot average is the second-worst in the top flight. They dominate possession against sides they cannot break down and then concede on the counter. They drew blanks against Hull and Bournemouth while having 72% and 63% of the ball respectively. They failed to score against City despite having a man advantage for three-quarters of the match.
This is not a new problem. [Carrick is carrying the can for a set of structural failures that predate him by years](/uprise/football/fernandes-gamble-leaves-carrick-to-carry-the-can-for-uniteds), and it was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who presided over the same inability to break teams down when dominating possession. The parallels are uncomfortable. Two club legends promoted beyond their demonstrable coaching ability, inheriting the same foundational mess, producing the same symptomatic failure. The framing changes with each appointment; the football does not.
The Legs Have Gone
Bruno Fernandes went public with his frustration after the Como defeat, and Carrick's response was to point straight back at the players. "Whatever system you play, whatever tactics you play, if you don't run, and you don't run forward, and you don't run back, you ain't going to win," was how he put it. The data backs him up, at least partially.
United's outfield players are averaging fewer sprints per 90 minutes than they managed under Carrick last season. Youri Tielemans, five years Casemiro's junior, is barely registering the sprint numbers that the veteran Brazilian produced. United's average possession has climbed from 49.1% to 56.7% this season, which might explain some of the reduction in sprinting, but it does not explain all of it. Manchester City lead the league for possession at 64.7% and still average marginally more sprints than United. Arsenal have the second-highest ball share in the division and they sprint more than United do. The possession excuse only stretches so far.
What the Summer Told Us
Then there is the recruitment question, which sits underneath all of this like a fault line. United's net transfer spend this summer was higher than every club outside the Premier League except Real Madrid. That is an extraordinary level of financial commitment for a squad currently sitting 16th. Their expected points position of 10th is the underlying reality, and even that, for a club of United's revenue, history and ambition, represents a damning underachievement.
Poor recruitment amplified an already fragile situation. When your results from the previous season were built on outperforming your underlying numbers by a record margin, the worst possible response is to invest heavily in players who do not materially improve what those underlying numbers are saying. United did exactly that. They bought for a version of the team that only existed in the points column, not the one that existed in the data.
A Verdict Written in the Numbers
The favourable circumstances that propped up last season have gone completely: no light schedule, no relentless fortune with one-goal results, no coin flips falling the right way. What remains is a team that cannot break down a low block, does not cover enough ground, shoots from too far out, and has a manager whose tactical responses to those problems have yet to convince anyone, including his own captain.
Carrick may be a victim of circumstances that were always going to catch up with him. But circumstance does not absove a manager of responsibility for what happens when the conditions change, and Carrick has not found answers. The numbers were never lying. United just chose not to listen to them.