I’ll admit something straight away. I did not expect Michael Carrick to do this well.
Eight matches, six wins, one draw, one defeat, United suddenly sitting in 3rd and the belief around the place has come rushing back as if someone opened a window after five months of stale air.
Players who looked lost have rediscovered some sort of form and in Sesko’s case he has practically found a new career. The good vibes are back, the dressing room looks happier and even we as fans feel a little more excited when matchday rolls around.
And if I am being completely honest, when Carrick first took over I had absolutely no idea what to expect.
But it certainly wasn’t this.
However, after the Newcastle match I started thinking about something that might sound slightly uncomfortable:
I think we may have already seen everything Carrick is capable of, at least at this stage of his managerial career.
When he was at Middlesbrough I knew almost nothing about him. I heard that he was doing reasonably well, that they were hovering around the playoff spots and that promotion to the Premier League was a possibility, but that was about the extent of my knowledge.
I knew nothing about his tactical ideas, nothing about his management style, nothing about whether he was adaptable, ruthless, stubborn or the type who has a group of favourites that can get away with murder.
When Carrick was previously in United’s dugout he was the assistant, which means nobody paid that much attention to him because Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was the one standing in the spotlight.
And that made sense. The manager always gets the attention.
It was only when Ruben Amorim was sacked and Carrick was suddenly promoted to interim manager, beating Solskjaer himself to the role, that we started hearing all these reports claiming that Carrick and Kieran McKenna were actually the tactical brains behind the operation.
Which is interesting, because what we are seeing from United right now feels incredibly familiar.
The football is almost identical to what we saw five years ago under Ole.
Organised. Compact. Counter attacking. Hoping that individual quality produces the decisive moment.
Carrick’s assistant Steve Holland has also been around the block a few times. He has worked under José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and more recently Gareth Southgate with England.
Coincidentally every one of those managers has some sort of connection to United.
Mourinho was obviously our manager. Ancelotti was heavily linked with the job not that long ago. And Southgate has been whispered about ever since INEOS arrived.
And that last one worries me slightly.
SIR Gareth Southgate. Yes, I still cannot believe that man is a knight! I see they give it to just anybody these days.
Southgate has a strong relationship with Sir Dave Brailsford, who is effectively Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s right-hand man at INEOS. For a long time there has been a feeling that the club would quite like him to manage United at some point.
And if you watched England under Southgate with Steve Holland sitting next to him, you will probably recognise what we are seeing at United right now.
Organised. Hard to break down. Efficient. But rarely dominant.
It can work.
But only to a certain extent.
Southgate ultimately won nothing with England. Carrick at Middlesbrough did not get them promoted and did not even make the playoffs before eventually being sacked.
And these are the coaches currently running Manchester United.
Which brings me to the uncomfortable question: Have we already seen Carrick’s ceiling?
If I'm being honest, I do not think the football is going to improve that much from here.
This might genuinely be as good as it gets at the moment.
Yes, with more experience and another season under his belt there could be some improvement. Managers do grow and develop.
But are we suddenly going to see United transform into some beautifully fluid attacking machine that dominates games and overwhelms opponents in the coming season should Carrick stay?
I highly doubt it.
The Newcastle defeat was actually a result that had been coming for weeks.
Since the win over Arsenal the performances have been getting progressively shakier. Fulham had more possession than us and we needed a late winner. Spurs went down to ten men for almost an hour. A late Sesko goal rescued a point at West Ham. Another late strike earned a scrappy win at Everton.
Then came Palace, who also went down to ten men and still managed to give us problems.
It was always going to catch up with us eventually.
And Newcastle exposed it properly.
Even with ten men they looked like the better team for long spells of the game, which is frankly quite damning. When a team goes a man down the usual response is obvious: you bring on a defender, sit deeper and try to survive.
Newcastle did not do that.
In fact Eddie Howe barely changed anything.
They were still brave, still attacking and still playing on the front foot.
That tells you something.
It tells you that Howe looked at United and thought his ten men were still good enough to beat Carrick’s eleven.
And the worrying part is that he was right.
That kind of bravery is actually something you would love to see from the United manager. Carrick did not show any of it.
His substitutions were extremely cautious. Casemiro came off for Ugarte, which felt like replacing a flawed footballer with someone who occasionally looks like he is playing for the opposition. Then Mazraoui came off and we replaced him with another defender instead of simply throwing on an extra attacker and saying screw it, we're going for this.
Against ten men we were still playing defend and counter.
Howe took the risk. Howe got the reward.
Carrick’s in-game management has also become a bit of a concern recently. Some of his decisions during matches have been confusing, particularly when the game is crying out for something different.
Against Newcastle we had an entire half against ten men and did very little to exploit the extra spaces.
Then came the substitutions.
Mbeumo struggled for most of the night but stayed on for far longer than he should have. Malacia was brought on for reasons that still confuse us all. And at no point did it feel like Carrick was actively trying to tilt the game in our favour.
It all felt very safe.
Another issue is how United play with a striker.
Sesko has scored some important goals recently and deserves credit for that, but many of them have come from individual moments rather than consistent service.
A header against Palace. A counter attack at Everton. And a goal of the month nominee flick at West Ham which honestly deserves a place in the Louvre.
But outside of those moments he barely sees the ball.
This has been a problem at United for years. Being the no 9 here is like working a graveyard shift, a term that we've often used to describe the lack of involvement of our striker. You run around for 90 minutes and occasionally someone remembers you exist.
Sesko is a tall striker with an incredible leap which naturally raises a very simple question: Why do we almost never cross the ball to him?
Imagine giving him three or four proper aerial opportunities every game. The man could score a ridiculous number of goals.
Instead we seem far more comfortable playing with a false 9.
Some of United’s best performances in this interim spell have come when Mbeumo or Cunha has played centrally instead.
The full-backs rarely overlap either, which makes life far harder for the wingers. Cunha and Mbeumo often end up isolated out wide with very little support.
If the full-backs pushed forward more often you would create overloads, open up space and allow the wide players to drift inside where they are far more dangerous.
At the moment we simply do not see enough of that.
There is also something else I would like to see from Carrick.
A bit of emotion.
Lose your head occasionally. Kick a water bottle. Shout at someone. Look like Dalot losing the ball physically hurts you!
Managers need a ruthless edge.
Carrick comes across as incredibly calm, polite and nice, which is great for morale, but at some point you also need someone willing to lay down the law.
Everything we hear about Carrick’s management style revolves around making players comfortable and keeping the environment positive.
That is valuable.
But it cannot be the whole job.
To be clear, I am not blaming Carrick for any of this. At this stage of his managerial career this might simply be where he is. A coach who relies on organisation, counter attacks and moments of individual brilliance.
And to be fair to him, as an interim manager what else is he supposed to do? His job is to stabilise the team, get results and put United in a position where Champions League qualification becomes possible.
Which he has done.
The problem is what happens next.
If United do qualify for the Champions League, and it is looking increasingly likely, there is a real chance the club will give him the job permanently.
And if that decision is based purely on results rather than performances, we might have a problem next season.
My gut feeling is that we qualify, Carrick gets the job full-time and the football remains fairly basic.
Eventually the results dip. Opponents figure us out. The familiar reports appear about training being too simple and players losing belief. Carrick then gets sacked.
And the cycle starts all over again.
Hiring Carrick permanently based purely on Champions League qualification would be a massive gamble.
And right now I am not entirely convinced United are in a position where gambling is the smartest idea.
Michael Carrick has given himself a strong chance of becoming Man Utd's permanent manager after winning six of his eight games as interim | Image credit: Getty Images via Goal