Whenever the fortunes of Newcastle United start to decline, I look around for a bit of schadenfreude.

Not for the first time in recent seasons, I’m thinking: “At least I wasn’t cursed with being a supporter of the Salfords.”

This week’s episode of the never-ending soap opera, based appropriately in the neighbourhood of Coronation Street, features a Geordie in exile and a Portuguese prima donna.

The action moves from the training ground to the shores of Lake Como, a beautiful part of northern Italy, though I doubt many fans of the club formerly known as Newton Heath will list this holiday paradise among their favourite destinations.

A swift recap: Manchester United, coached by Michael Carrick, the aforementioned Geordie, are languishing in the Premier League and travelled to Italy having won only two of their 10 games domestically or in Europe.

Carrick was given a two-year contract in the summer after winning 12 of his 17 games in charge last season to guide Manchester United back into the Champions League, ending a two-year absence.

On October 13, in Madrid, they lost 2-0 to Atletico. The Salfords actually played reasonably well that night, in my opinion, considering they conceded in the first minute and had a player red-carded in the second half. Carrick appeared to have set them up to put pressure on the Spaniards, though the players asked to do that were not exactly renowned for a high workrate.

This is what I texted a friend that night, five minutes in: “The Carrick formation is weird, expecting Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford to close down defenders with a high press.” Predictably, they didn’t work hard enough. Who’d have thought it?

Last season, Bruno Fernandes was named the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year, the Premier League Player of the Season and the PFA Player of the Year.

He is undeniably a top player when on song. The same goes for Rashford, though his career has rarely returned to the dizzy heights of his early days. Apart from loads of talent, they have another trait in common: when the going gets tough, they tend to be conspicuously poor (although not in monetary terms).

The Salfords soap opera moved from Spain to Italy via a creditable weekend draw at Elland Road, where earlier this season the one true United were battered and beaten by a rampant Leeds team.

Any encouragement Michael Carrick and his players took from that away point quickly disappeared against Como, who scored in the second minute. And the 49th, the 57th and the 76th. A stoppage-time goal for the visitors was no consolation, though the 4-1 defeat was not what made the headlines on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Those were sparked by the words of Bruno Fernandes. Rashford was not in the squad on Wednesday night, one of nine players apparently unavailable because of injury.

In an interview only minutes after the referee blew to put the Salfords out of their misery, the captain said: “It’s a decision from the staff to not press man to man and sometimes leave space behind and try to get the ball, but sometimes when you give too much the ball to these teams they get confidence.”

Asked whether Carrick got his tactics wrong, Fernandes replied: “That’s on the manager and staff to see it, not me. Sometimes you have to be more brave under pressure, take the risk of pressing high and making them [the opposition] uncomfortable.”

Amazingly, he can pass the buck even more impressively than he can pass the ball. Don’t you just love it when a rival club washes its dirty linen in public!

Carrick was asked at the post-match press conference what he thought of the midfielder’s comments. His response was carefully worded, as carefully worded as the sentences that had lit the blue touchpaper. “There’s a little bit of whatever system you play, whatever tactics you play, if you don’t run, and you don’t run forward, and you don’t run back, you aren’t going to win.”

One constant in the ever-changing world of this laughable soap opera is the lack of running compared with the opposition. At times, their play has resembled walking football this season.

Carrick didn’t hide his unhappiness. “We’ve got a lot of values in this football club; what we represent and how we want to go about it. We might win, we might lose, but the way we went about it tonight wasn’t acceptable.”

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot to read between the lines. The bookies certainly didn’t miss the clues, quickly installing Carrick as the most likely of all 20 Premier League managers to be sacked.

Some of the biggest Old Trafford cheerleaders, such as Rio Ferdinand, were delighted when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, another fans’ favourite as a player, was appointed manager in 2018. “Ole’s driving the bus!” they crowed. When he was dismissed three years later, Carrick stepped in as caretaker for a couple of weeks.

Then Ralf Rangnick, one of Matthias Jaissle’s biggest influences, took over as “interim manager” for the rest of the season. He was followed in May 2022 by Erik ten Hag, who lasted two seasons and three months. Annoyingly, his team beat Eddie Howe’s team in the 2023 League Cup final, then won the FA Cup in 2024 to deny Newcastle United the prospect of a European campaign in the 2024-25 season.

Ruud van Nistelrooy served as caretaker boss for two weeks. Ruben Amorim succeeded him but that was his only success: he was sacked after 14 months. Darren Fletcher stepped into the breach for a week before Carrick took over in January of this year.

I make that a Magnificent Seven appointments since Eddie Howe moved to Tyneside. He left, with regrets, on July 30. No wonder Carrick is the odds-on favourite to lose his job.

Forget driving the bus. Some players at Old Trafford seem intent on throwing the boss under it.