Michael Carrick has always scoffed when, after matches, it was put to him that he is making management look easy.
Four consecutive wins, finding themselves behind only once, and then seven points from the three games that followed at West Ham and Everton, and at home to Crystal Palace. Easy, supposedly.
The last three games haven’t been smooth sailing, though. Even United insiders can concede that.
Two of those games came on the road and United didn’t lose either, which Carrick was quick to point out. No team has a divine right to win any game or to dominate for 90 minutes. Not least when on the road. All fair caveats.
Yet Palace was different. Uncharted territory for Carrick and United. Losing at home. Not playing well. Behind at half-time and not playing well… time to show what you are made of.
As groans from the stands corralled into the concourses next to the food kiosks, discontent was palpable everywhere except for the United dugout.
Bruno Fernandes levelled from the spot after Matheus Cunha had been pulled back
Happy is too strong a word but Carrick was embracing adversity as he jogged back to the dressing room. He had been waiting for this exact scenario to really find out what his players are made of.
‘It was more how do we react,’ he explained.
‘It’s been going in our favour. I said to them, “here’s something I’ve been waiting for, this moment, to see, go on then, what we’re going to do about it and be positive”. And the boys responded ever so well, so it was a big thing for us.’
Carrick laughed at the term ‘stodgy’ to describe his side’s starts after the West Ham game but let’s stick with it: United have now begun games in that fashion for the past three matches, there’s no getting away from it.
At West Ham they mustered just 0.02xG from open play in the opening 45 minutes. At Everton it was just 0.39 by the same metric, and 0.12xG against Crystal Palace.
Three games where United were a step off the pace and looking to have too many square pegs in round holes. Three games where the holes in United’s squad made for uncomfortable viewing.
‘It’s the biggest thing for us to take from the game, really,’ he said of the spirit to come back and win 2-1 against Palace.
‘It’s the first time that we’ve been in that situation going in at half-time [behind].’
He added: ‘At half-time it was about being in that position and how we react and showing that personality and the belief.
‘Football is tough at times and this league is tough, so you’re never always going to have it your own way.’
For as bad as it was for 30 minutes against Palace – the first side to hold the lead over Carrick’s United at half-time – resignation had not set in like it so often did as the wheels began to come off for Ruben Amorim.
Benjamin Sesko sealed United’s comeback win with his fourth goal in five matches
Taking this season as a sample size, United won just four points from a possible 21 in the seven matches where Amorim’s side went 1-0 down, winning, ironically, away to Crystal Palace.
Extrapolating the sample size out to 2025 and the second half of the 2024-25 campaign, United managed just eight points from a possible 36 when going 1-0 down in league matches.
Amad Diallo’s hat-trick turned a 1-0 defeat to Southampton into a 3-1 win, while Jaden Philogene’s brace was wiped out to knock Ipswich Town off 3-2. Both of those sides were relegated and are now in the Championship.
What Carrick has been trying to do – and you can’t fix it all overnight – is to add a steeliness that when they aren’t at their best, they still grind out wins.
That’s what the sides he played in here managed to do. It’s the standard he’s setting for the short, medium and long term.
They couldn’t do that earlier this season when Arsenal, far from their best, ground out a 1-0 win at Old Trafford on the opening day.
Or Everton, with 10 men. Or last season you look at losing 3-1 to Brighton, 2-0 to Crystal Palace, 1-0 to Wolves, or 2-0 to West Ham. All of those games at Old Trafford where United teams went behind and lacked both the belief and inspiration to turn the tide.
‘My biggest problem is for my players to believe in you guys when you say the problem of our team is the system. I get crazy about that,’ Amorim once said.
You felt that then. Belief waning on the pitch and in the stands that results could be turned on their head. The disillusionment clung to this group like an unwanted shadow.
There isn’t that now. Carrick is injecting belief back into the club that even when it’s uglier or grittier than what was served up in his opening demolition job of Manchester City, the soft underbelly is not showing.
Carrick’s side have won the second halves against Man City (2-0), Arsenal (2-1), Tottenham Hotspur (1-0), Everton (1-0), and now Crystal Palace (2-0).
United, on their longest unbeaten run in games which they fell behind in in the league since winning five in a row from November 2020 to January 2021, can now win in spite of squad-building deficiencies, instead of using them as an excuse as to why they must ‘suffer’ indefinitely until more money presents itself to rectify them.
‘It feels like a big result, we were behind and had to show some character,’ man of the match Bruno Fernandes told Sky Sports.
He’s not wrong. This was big, in more ways than one.
