Man United secure Champions League spot – why not appoint Michael Carrick?

“You want to follow him. You want to fight for him. You want to die for him on the field. We showed that today.”

Kobbie Mainoo’s review of coach Michael Carrick on Sky Sports Manchester United Liverpool won 3-2 Echoes in the Premier League.

It resonated because when Maino scored the 77th-minute winner at Old Trafford, the stadium announcer praised the local 21-year-old, who signed his new long-term contract on Thursday.

Maino has become the club’s poster boy.

That’s surprising because he was rejected to join Napoli on loan last summer, didn’t start a league game in the first five months of the season and was set to have a serious conversation about his career in January before Ruben Amorim got a pair of boots.

Ex Manchester City Defender Micah Richards told BBC Sport: “Watching him play, you can see the difference Carrick has made from the old manager’s disbelief and then the new manager coming in and creating a lot of confidence.

Bringing Mino into the fold – and getting him to play at the highest level – is one of Carrick’s tasks as he is asked to manage his former club until the end of the season.

He also reinstated boss Bruno Fernandes to his favored position and oversees City’s wins. Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Chelsea And now Liverpool – United’s first league double against their former rivals since 2015-16.

The 44-year-old also led United to the Champions League after a two-year absence.

Normally, Carrick didn’t want to talk about his future.

“Whatever is going to happen is going to happen,” he said.

However, when he talked about his situation during his post-game briefing with the media, he seemed a bit more distant than before.

“I love doing what I do,” he said. “It feels so natural. It’s a good place to sit.”

Over the last four months there has been a lot of focus on what Carrick hasn’t been.

At a news conference or on the sidelines, a demo is not individual. He doesn’t charge like Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid.

His most telling responses on Sunday came in a chat with fourth official Anthony Taylor when decisions seemed to go against his side in the first half.

We don’t know how he will react when he plays the game every three or four days, rather once a week and sometimes not even that, although he was good at Middlesbrough before the sale of key players.

We cannot know how he will react to a losing order because it has not happened yet. United have won 10 of their 14 games under Carrick. No team has accumulated more points in that span.

This is the reality. This is what the United hierarchy will be throwing away if they choose to replace Carrick after three games.

Unless Paris Saint-Germain manager Luis Enrique is involved in turning Europe’s best team into the Premier League, it is hard to imagine United coming up with an alternative.