JEREMY CROSS COLUMN Manchester United sacking a manager and hunting a winning replacement is almost an annual event - it's football's equivalent of a donkey derby thanks to Sir Jim Ratcliffe and co

The runners and riders are being lined up as Manchester United consider another managerial change. It feels like an annual event now - football's equivalent of a donkey derby.

And while the odds on Carrick getting his marching orders are short, those on his replacement being able to do a better job than him are even shorter. And Carrick has won just two of 11 games this season.

When Carrick is sacked, he will represent the latest in a long line of good men to be left broken by United. The same thing happened to David Moyes, Erik ten Hag, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ruben Amorim. Managers who discovered they'd taken a job at club so riddled with rot, the team was impossible to manage.

Managing United doesn't remain a poisoned chalice. It is the equivalent of inhaling carbon monoxide before waiting to die.

Managing United used to be one of the great privileges in the game. One of the most prestigious roles in the whole of sport. But thanks to those who run the show, it is now a trip down a dead end of pain and suffering.

Co-owners the Glazers don't care who manages the team. Their motivation remains making money. While Sir Jim Ratcliffe thinks he knows how to run a football club the size of United, but is too arrogant to realise he doesn't.

This is a man who thinks it acceptable to claim the UK has been "colonised by immigrants". Someone who tried to tell Olympic hero Sir Ben Ainsley how to sail.

Someone who appointed Dan Ashworth as sporting director, then sacked him within six months. Someone who tried but failed to appoint Thomas Tuchel, then gave the job to Amorim.

Then sacked him and appointed Carrick. A manager who is now being brutally exposed, when having more than one game a week to prepare for.

Whoever the next holder of the position will be remains to be seen. But for reasons explained above, which manager in his right mind would want the job?

He will be inheriting a broken and divided squad. One without a left back or second striker.

One which is led by a captain who has such little respect for his current manager that he thinks it acceptable to try and destroy him in public. A team which seems satisfied with a draw at Leeds.

There is nothing united about this once great club. One so utterly poisonous and dysfunctional it has managed the impossible. By creating a new crisis of its own to distract from the one engulfing its neighbours across town.

The road back to the top for United is a long one indeed. The team haven't won a league title since 2013, while the Champions League hasn't been conquered in almost two decades.

The distance between them and their greatest rivals remains vast. So who would be willing to accept that challenge?

The rinse and repeat culture embedded into United's DNA has brought them to their knees. Again. Because if out-of-depth idiots are allowed to run a company, this is what happens.

And while the Glazers and Ratcliffe continue to mastermind this maelstrom of madness in Manchester, nothing will ever change. Not for the better, at least.