Even more astonishing than the position Manchester United find themselves in is the apparent lack of urgency to do a damn thing about it.

The Red Devils enter the international break on a 40-year low, languishing in the relegation zone after just a single win in 10 games this season.

The last time United were in such a predicament, they appointed a fiery Scot by the name of Alex Ferguson. Now, though, it will take more than a new manager to change the club’s fortunes. And even if there was another Ferguson available for hire, United would neither recognise him, nor have the gumption to go and get him.

One of football’s grandest clubs has become a willing hostage to the indecisiveness of Jason Malcolm Wilcox. One day, it will be studied how he, an ex-Manchester City academy director with none of the credentials to hold the power he wields, ascended to become kingmaker at Old Trafford. United, though, have no time for such introspection when there’s dithering to be done.

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Apparently, Wilcox and the Ineos brains trust have spent the last few weeks assessing Michael Carrick’s position, as if it isn’t bleedingly obvious that the manager is woefully out of his depth. That is no great slight on Carrick; United have chewed up and spat out managers with far greater experience and pedigree than the ex-midfielder.

It took until the Monday after a ridiculous 4-4 draw with Aston Villa to concede that they probably should sack Carrick. But not yet, obviously. You cannot escape the notion that they are waiting to test the temperature of the water before they actually do anything.

These are not serious people.

What had Wilcox and co seen in the last eight games – a stretch between international windows which Carrick was reportedly given to save himself – that made them believe that United could possibly arrest this generational slump with just a little refinement?

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In that time, United have conceded 19 goals while losing to Atletico Madrid, Como, Bournemouth and Chelsea, while drawing with Tottenham Hotspur, Leeds United and Aston Villa. Carrick will always have Roma, but that late rally was a flash of terminal lucidity, the Lazarus moment of a patient circling the drain.

Their comeback against Villa wasn’t even that. We’re not sure what that was. It did, however, illustrate why Unai Emery probably is not the answer that many view him to be.

The Villans’ capitulation drove Emery down the tunnel to despair. Managing the United mob, under Ineos and without the allies he has cocooned himself within at Villa Park, would make the Spaniard’s head fall off.

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With even the best candidate, according to many, seemingly not up to an increasingly impossible job, it provides Wilcox excuses for his dithering.

But the perilously small pool of managers capable of thriving at United should not delay this decision, however unpleasant. And it certainly does not absolve him or his cronies of the blame for making United almost unmanageable.

He and Ineos are responsible for the mess Carrick is mired in. Sure, a popular-but-weak manager offers a tempting shield for the leadership’s shortcomings. But United fans, along with everyone else, recognise self-serving arse-covering when they see it for the 427th time.

Stretford Enders, when they aren’t smearing the walls with their own sh*t by once again booing the wrong target, at least understand that Carrick is low on the list of United’s many problems, at the top of which remains the majority owners.

After the Glazers are Ineos. Then come the players that make up a woefully imbalanced and underwhelming squad, long before the manager tasked with making a United team greater than the sum of its inferior parts.

Especially in the absence of a desire to act decisively in the January transfer window, with a relegation scrap an all-too-likely prospect, the easiest change to make remains the manger. But Wilcox is fudging it. They will not appoint anybody who is difficult to hire like Emery or difficult to manage like Antonio Conte.

This desperate state of inertia off the field has berthed a team not in this manager’s image, or any of his predecessors’, but the board’s. While that continues, as it surely will, then United really could sleepwalk all the way to the Championship.