Carrick’s Man Utd tactics broke down in the middle of the pitch, not at the back, and the back was just where it showed. Michael Carrick’s side let in 30 goals this season before he was sacked on Thursday, which BBC Sport’s Simon Stone says is the most of any team in Europe’s top five leagues apart from Lens. Everyone looked at the defenders. Our view is that they were left exposed by a front six built to attack, with nobody screening them.

Earlier coverage: Carrick Sacking: BBC Says Chelsea, Roma, Villa Were the Test (12 November), Carrick Sacked, but BBC’s Stone Says Recruitment Failed First (12 November), Carrick’s Man Utd Record: What He Got Right Before the Slide (12 November) and Carrick’s Man Utd Run: Eight Games, One Win (11 November).

An attack with too many people in one place

Last season it worked. United won 12 of their last 17 games under Carrick, and the BBC’s Sami Mokbel reports that the club’s hierarchy felt his style gave the forwards more freedom. Stone writes that senior staff spoke optimistically in pre-season about a proposed partnership between Bruno Fernandes and Youri Tielemans, with Fernandes in the central role he excelled in during the second half of last season.

That plan fell apart before it started. Amad Diallo’s ankle injury ruled him out for seven weeks, Benjamin Sesko was still easing back from a shin problem, and Bryan Mbeumo had to play on the right of the attack at Hull. Carrick turned to Matheus Cunha, who likes to drop deep, and Stone says he took himself into the spaces Fernandes likes to use. The attack was neutralised on a day United looked unprepared for the physical side of it, and they lost. Elsewhere in his piece Stone quotes a source close to one player who questioned why so much attention went on midfield recruitment when the result was Fernandes being moved away from that central role.

Fernandes did put three past Ipswich the following week in a 5-2 win. It’s the last league win United have had.

Nobody in front of the back four

Casemiro left and the replacement was slow. Stone says the £70m deal for Carlos Baleba wasn’t completed until 25 August, and a pre-existing ankle problem meant a debut on 10 October. He has started five games and is now out with a hamstring injury. Andrey Santos, signed from Chelsea, has started four league games. Official Fantasy Premier League data also lists Ugarte as injured with a knee problem and no return date.

So the shape on the pitch was a pair of attacking midfielders, a back four and not much between them. Games opened up the second they lost the ball. Look at Aston Villa on 8 November, Carrick’s last match: they were 2-0 down inside four minutes, with Alysson’s shot squeezing under Senne Lammens and Nicolas Jackson scoring from the rebound of the second. Then, after the break, a free-kick led to Leny Yoro heading the ball back towards his keeper, Lammens punching it onto his own crossbar and Leon Goretzka prodding in. According to the BBC’s match report, that was the 53rd minute and Villa were two clear again, after United had levelled at 2-2 before the break.

That was individual error on top of a structural gap. Stone notes the back four for the first home game of the season was the same as Erik ten Hag’s first at Old Trafford in 2022, so central defence had barely been touched either. At left-back Carrick used five different players. And after the 4-1 defeat by Como, Fernandes criticised Carrick’s tactics, which is not what a captain says when the structure is working.

Six games that tell the story

Eight goals conceded across Chelsea, Roma and Villa underlined it. Mokbel writes of a feeling that there wasn’t enough progress in team structure over that spell, and the club decided to go. Carrick’s answer to the early questions was “It’s not been that bad.” After the Villa draw United were 18th and a point from safety.

What Pochettino inherits

The BBC says that if Pochettino takes charge of the USA’s second game against Haiti on 18 November, he will be at Carrington on 19 November. Liverpool away is on 22 November (4.30pm). Three days won’t rebuild a team. Our suggestion is to fix the gap first: a holding midfielder in front of the centre-backs with Fernandes playing centrally and Cunha and Mbeumo either side of him. We covered Pochettino’s press and where his teams fade earlier in the week, and a team that presses high needs exactly the cover United haven’t had.