Fans are fickle and easily swayed, while executive club management has proved to be serial failures

A goal didn’t look on when Lewis Cook hit it forward early into Manchester United’s half. Senne Lammens was rushing out and would surely get there first ... but the wind god had other ideas. The ball held up in the breeze and Evanilson nipped in to prod it beyond the keeper. Now he was well wide, but he hit the shot the only way it ever goes in from out there: with total conviction.

Seeing Evanilson’s finish, many of the home crowd at Old Trafford will have thought of Mark Hughes’s famous goal against Barcelona in the Cup-Winners Cup final in Rotterdam. A memory from a time when their club was animated by a different spirit.

This was United’s third 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth, under a third different manager, in three years. The game had the usual pattern: Bournemouth compact, organised, sharp, United shuffling around in an apparent fugue state, mystifyingly unable to execute the simplest tasks.

The unusual thing was that this time some of United’s biggest and best-paid stars were watching from the bench due to recent differences of vision with the coach: Bruno Fernandes, Lisandro Martinez, Matheus Cunha.

When Martinez did come on in the second half, he was promptly overrun by Rayan, who should have scored. Bruno, United’s player of the 2020s, was left to stew on the bench, watching Michael Carrick introduce players like Joshua Zirkzee and Shea Lacey ahead of him.

Before the third goal, the noise at Old Trafford had all been coming from the Bournemouth fans: “Sacked in the morning”; “You’re going down with the City” and so on. But in the last 25 minutes the home crowd found their voice. The collective commentary they offered left no doubt as to who they blame for the current mess.

“You can stick your new stadium up your arse”, “We want Glazers out”, “Jason Wilcox, you’re a w****r”, “Sell United and f**k off home”, and a new entry “Best In Class – you’re having a laugh”.

The boos at full-time quickly gave way to Carrick’s song: “It’s hard to believe it’s not Scholes, it’s Carrick you know”. As Carrick walked apologetically down the tunnel, the song gave way to furious boos for the players who were following behind him.

It is worth pausing to reflect on what a remarkable scene this was – the supporters saluting their failed, about-to-be-sacked manager, while screaming their contempt for everyone else associated with the club.

Afterwards Carrick kept saying that hearing the reaction of the fans had given him “mixed emotions”, though he didn’t say what those emotions were. It was obvious enough that sorrow was one of them, but the unmentionable emotion he was also feeling was relief. Relief to know that in the end (and this surely was the end), the supporters don’t actually blame him for this. And maybe also relief that this scene would finally ensure his escape from the nightmare his position has become.

Imagine you’re one of the players walking towards that tunnel behind Carrick, hearing the crowd salute him, seeing him wave his thanks and acknowledgment – and then hearing the same fans round viciously on you.

It’s clear that quite a few of them don’t rate this coach. Fernandes’s interview after the Como debacle last week made it clear that he didn’t think Carrick’s tactical preparation was good enough. Martinez’s interview after the defeat to Atlético Madrid made it evident that he didn’t believe Carrick was a very important factor in club affairs. You simply don’t speak that way about a coach you respect.

Fernandes had also said in Como that United “focus too much on the past ... Everyone at the club has to understand that it’s not the same any more, we’re not in the past any more and we have to look to the future. We have to create something different in the present.”

Then Carrick came out for his press conference on Friday and delivered a five-minute homily on the historic values of Manchester United that name-checked Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, Sir Alex, Sir Bobby and Sir Matt.

That stuff goes down well with the fans, who yesterday unfurled a banner featuring the faces of Eric Cantona, Bryan Robson and Roy Keane over the word “STANDARDS”. But is “you are nothing compared to those who came before you” a message that is likely to inspire these young United players?

We like to think of the fans as being the collective repository of the deep wisdom of the club, but in reality crowds often display terrible judgment. The United fans swept Ole Gunnar Solskjær into the job on a wave of jubilation. They shamelessly hero-worshipped Cristiano Ronaldo when that circus rolled back into their club in 2021. They rallied so ferociously behind Erik ten Hag when he won the FA Cup in 2024 that the club decided not to sack him and to renew his contract instead. Carrick, too, was transformed from interim to permanent by the alchemy of popular acclaim.

Of course, it’s not the fans who are ultimately responsible for those regrettable decisions, but the weak executives who pander to them. Unfortunately for United chief executive Omar Berrada and sporting director Jason Wilcox, they appear finally to have pandered their way into a corner. The terrible results and the falling-out with Fernandes have left them with little choice but to sack Carrick this week. But a third midseason sacking in three seasons would leave them dangerously exposed.

“Why are this pair of ex-Manchester City officials running Manchester United anyway?” is a question an uncomfortably large number of people are now asking. For Jim Ratcliffe, their City credentials meant “best in class”, but the recent independent commission findings indicate that illegal owner funding from Abu Dhabi was playing a rather more significant part in Manchester City’s success than anything Berrada or Wilcox were doing.

Their record since joining United reveals that, rather than working according to clear and well-thought-out principles, they are always ready to throw out their plans according to what seems popular in that moment. Renew Ten Hag, sack Ten Hag, believe in Amorim, sack Amorim, make Carrick permanent, sack Carrick. The best thing they could do for United would be to pander to the crowd one last time and follow Carrick out the door.