Well it has been a humbling season for Manchester United with only two wins on the board. A 5-2 victory over promoted Ipswich and a 4-0 win over Champions League new boys Sabah. Other than that it’s been losses or uninspiring draws.

Based on what we are seeing United bought cheaper options in midfield in the form of an aging Youri Tielemans, an inexperienced Brazilian in Andrey Santos and Carlos Baleba who was coming off a poor year and arrived with an injury which kept him sidelined until late September.

They spent significant funds on the three players when they had the option of buying Sandro Tonali and Mateus Fernandes albeit at significantly higher prices they chose the cheaper options or Jason Wilcox we are led to believe pushed the club in the direction of the cheaper players. To have not secured at least one of Tonali or Fernandes looks like a blunder of epic proportions given how well they are now playing for Spurs.

Meanwhile Tielemans looks like father time has just caught up with him, Santos looks like he is out of his depth and can’t handle the shirt while Baleba by default has been the best of the three new additions but that is not saying much as he has not exactly exploded onto the scene.

It was plain to see vs Bournemouth when all three midfielders started that it is not a Premier League quality unit. Also in the summer no back up striker was acquired, no back up left back or central defenders were brought in despite a glaring need for all of these positions to be reinforced along with the midfield revamp but nothing happened.

Jason Wilcox therefore should go as it seems he has his fingerprints on all three midfield transfer deals plus he did not feel the other signings were necessary. Rumours are suggesting the Director of recruitment at Manchester United – Christopher Vivell – a German professional football executive and former player should be the man to replace Wilcox.

Michael Carrick’s future looks most uncertain

It seems as though Michael Carrick is living on borrowed time. The fans may be singing his name and standing by the club legend but the players as Gary Neville put in on commentary have clearly “downed tools”. When you have lost the dressing room, you are short of options in key positions like striker, centre-back and left-back plus you have had a senior pro in Lisandro Martinez go crazy, slamming the United hierarchy things are bad enough.

However this sorry event was only to be followed by the club captain and best player Bruno Fernandes have an even more extreme public outburst where he ripped apart the tactics, the manager, the transfer business done and just about everything else about the club following their 4-1 loss to Como in the UCL.

It seems Carrick tried to properly punish Bruno on Sunday as he kept the captain on the bench despite being desperate for some quality to change the game for United. This shows that the two are unlikely to work together again so for that reason both manager and captain should be let go and sold respectively.

Where the problems really lie

Since the Glazers bought the club with a heavily leveraged buyout fans have protested and demanded the American owners to leave, feeling that the enormous interest payments on the club debt should have been spent on players and not kept allowing the owners to take more and more funds out of the club.

The addition of Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos has been pretty dismal decision except for a couple of Cups under Eric ten Hag. Ratcliffe has not enjoyed success with his Swiss team Lausanne Sport or with OCG Nice so why would he do a better job at United. Ratcliffe has been behind a slew of bad managerial choices as well as the £10million disaster of hiring and firing Dan Ashworth within weeks.

The majority of fans would like to see the back of both the Glazers and Jim Ratcliffe from Man United plus Ineos but that is not an easy thing to accomplish.

What can be done to improve the Man United situation?

Well in all honestly Michael Carrick should be replaced by a manager who has managed and won at the highest level. This really only leaves a few managers in all honesty out of all the mooted Man Utd candidates who meet those requirements. Even still the BBC report that Carrick will remain in place for the Chelsea game.

Julian Nagelsmann has won the Bundesliga with Bayern and also two DFL cups with the German giants and he has managed Germany somewhat unsuccessfully at the recent World Cup but at 39 years old he has proven he can win trophies and you would think there is more success to come for the well thought of manager.

Former Newcastle boss Eddie Howe has won a League Cup and has led his team into the Champions League but cannot really be considered as a top, top level manager like Nagelsmann and Conte.

Ex Chelsea boss Antonio Conte has won virtually everywhere he has gone including winning the Premier League title in his first season in West London and added an FA Cup in his 2nd season before leaving. Conte has won 3 Serie A titles with Juventus as well as a Serie A title each with Inter Milan and most recently Napoli. The passionate Italian has also won a handful of domestic cups in Italy as well as managing the Italian national team for 25 games over 2 years with a 56% win percentage.

So what’s needed is clearly get rid of those you can in the ineffective Wilcox, the downtrodden Carrick and the petulant Fernandes and then hire Antonio Conte and back him in the January and next summer’s transfer window.

Then hope Ineos and Jim Ratcliffe can keep out of the way of the hot-blooded Italian manager while he goes to work and hopefully backs up his impressive managerial record and leads United back into the mix of the Premier League’s elite before hopefully bringing them back into the cream of European teams.