Michael Carrick may be a decent human being - but nice guys never come first in sport

Manchester United went to Leeds under pressure. Serious pressure. The kind of pressure that exposes a football club for what it is.

Roy Keane called them a circus. Roy would know a thing or two about circuses.

But the joke is wearing thin at Old Trafford. This is Manchester United we are talking about. One of the great institutions of the game. A club that once intimidated opponents before a ball was kicked. Now they are happy enough not to lose.

That is the story.

Not Leeds. Not even the result. The story is Manchester United.

Lisandro Martínez, their Argentine defender, let fly during the week. His target was Jason Wilcox, the man charged with identifying and recruiting players at Old Trafford. It was an extraordinary intervention, but Martínez is one of the few United players whose opinions carry any real authority.

And the uncomfortable truth is that some of what he said needed to be said.

United have bought ordinary players. They do not frighten anybody.

You cannot build a great team out of a collection of names. You need footballers. You need leaders. Above all, you need a club that knows what it is trying to be.

United do not have that clarity.

Michael Carrick is a decent man who was a fine player in his day, and who has conducted himself with dignity in difficult circumstances since he got the reins at the club. He gives honest answers, does not blame his players when things go wrong.

But honesty is not enough.

Carrick looks like a man trying to manage a crisis that began long before he arrived. He is inexperienced, and the job is enormous. He may be competent. But Manchester United are not a finishing school for coaches.

Look at Leeds. Daniel Farke has given them something United appear to have misplaced. They have a shape. They have an identity. They know what is expected of them.

Go to Elland Road and you will have to earn your living. You will have to fight for every ball and every yard.

Leeds were trying to win the game yesterday. United were trying not to lose it.

Think about that for a moment.

Manchester United, reduced to a state of mind in which avoiding defeat is regarded as an achievement. This is a club that once measured itself against the greatest teams in Europe. Now look at them.

Matt Busby understood what Manchester United meant. Alex Ferguson understood it too. I would not pretend Ferguson and I would have agreed on everything, and he was not a man I would necessarily have wanted to spend an evening embracing. But he was a leader. Nobody could question that.

Twenty league titles in the history of Manchester United. Eighteen won under two men: Busby and Ferguson.

That is not a coincidence. It is the central fact of the club's modern history.

Great clubs require great leadership. They require people who can make difficult decisions and accept responsibility when things go wrong.

Who is doing that at United now?

The Glazers? They have presided over a long decline, and their ownership has done little to reassure supporters that football comes first.

But I would look just as closely at Jim Ratcliffe. Sir Jim, if you don't mind.

He has notions about himself. He has ideas about football. Whether those ideas are going to rescue Manchester United is another matter entirely.

It would be fascinating to hear him explain who he believes is responsible for the decline on his watch. Not in a carefully managed interview. Not in a statement prepared by somebody else. A straight answer.

Who is responsible?

Because the club cannot keep changing managers and pretending that each new appointment is the beginning of a revolution. At some point, somebody has to accept that the problem runs deeper than the man in the dugout.

Carrick is an easy target. He is there every week, answering questions and taking responsibility. The people above him have rather more protection.

I admire his honesty. I am not convinced he is the right man for Manchester United. Those two things can be true at the same time.

The mistake is to believe that replacing him, on its own, would solve anything.

United's supporters live in hope. They look at the history, the trophies, the great players and the nights when Old Trafford seemed to shake with expectation. They believe the club will return to its rightful place.

I am not so sure.

History is a wonderful thing. It can inspire you. It can also become a hiding place. Manchester United have spent too long living on memories, as if the achievements of Busby and Ferguson somehow guarantee future success.

They do not.

Here is the difficulty with Carrick. He is a gentleman. He was a top player. He is doing an honest job and taking responsibility for his team. Those are admirable qualities.

But Manchester United need more than admirable qualities.

They need somebody who can walk into that dressing room and make it clear that mediocrity is unacceptable. Somebody who can tell a player he is not good enough and mean it. Somebody who can challenge the people upstairs and refuse to be intimidated by them.

Somebody prepared to make himself unpopular.

In football, the best leaders are not always the nicest people. They are not necessarily the most charming, the most diplomatic or the most agreeable. They understand that the job comes first.

Ferguson understood that. Busby understood it in his own way. They were different men, but they knew what leadership demanded.

United do not need another carefully packaged vision. They do not need another expensive experiment. They do not need another manager sent out to explain why the players are struggling.

They need a football club with a spine.

They need a leader who can restore standards, impose discipline and make people uncomfortable again.

They need a bollix.

Carrick is a gentleman. And sometimes, at Manchester United, being a gentleman is not enough.