Michael Carrick is under pressure at Manchester United.
Eight matches without a win in all competitions, a disastrous start to the Premier League season, an embarrassing European defeat and another painful afternoon at Old Trafford have inevitably turned attention towards the manager.
That is how football works.
When results deteriorate, the manager becomes the face of the failure. His tactics are questioned. His selections are scrutinised. His relationship with the dressing room becomes a subject of discussion. Eventually, the familiar question arrives:
Should he be sacked?
But Manchester United have been asking versions of that question for more than a decade.
Perhaps it is time to ask a different one.
What if the manager is no longer the most important problem at Manchester United?
And few clubs make that question more uncomfortable than Brighton & Hove Albion.
Carrick’s honeymoon is over
Carrick’s arrival initially appeared to offer United something they desperately needed: stability.
There were encouraging performances, important victories and, crucially, results. United accumulated points at a rate that restored optimism around Old Trafford and eventually convinced the club that Carrick deserved the opportunity to lead the team permanently.
But there was always a warning hidden inside those results.
United were winning an unusually high number of close matches. Last season, they significantly outperformed their expected-points numbers, with eight of Carrick’s 12 league victories coming by a single goal.
That does not make those victories illegitimate.
It does, however, raise an important question about sustainability.
This season, the margins have moved in the opposite direction.
United have won only one of their opening eight league matches. They have gone eight games without victory across all competitions. A 4–1 Champions League defeat at Como intensified scrutiny before a 3–0 home defeat to Bournemouth pushed the conversation from poor form towards Carrick’s future.
The underlying performances offer little comfort.
United generate plenty of shots, but too many come from poor positions. They have struggled to convert possession into high-quality chances. Their defensive transitions have repeatedly exposed them. Their physical output has also attracted concern, with opponents consistently covering more ground.
These are legitimate coaching issues.
Carrick cannot be absolved simply because Manchester United have wider institutional problems. The manager remains responsible for organising his team, selecting his players, establishing standards and producing performances.
But that is only part of the story.
Because approximately 250 miles south of Manchester, another Premier League club offers a radically different model of how a football institution can operate.
The Brighton question
Brighton & Hove Albion should make Manchester United uncomfortable.
Not because Brighton are bigger.
They aren’t.
Not because they possess greater financial resources.
They don’t.
And certainly not because they have greater commercial power, global recognition or historical prestige.
Manchester United operate in another universe on all those measures.
Yet on the football pitch, Brighton currently look like the more coherent institution.
They sit near the top of the Premier League while United struggle near the bottom. They score freely, defend effectively and distribute responsibility throughout the team.
But the league table only reveals the outcome.
The real difference lies underneath it.
Brighton appear to know what Brighton are trying to be.
That sounds remarkably simple.
In modern football, it is enormously powerful.
Don’t just buy good players. Buy the right players.
Every wealthy football club can identify talented footballers.
The difficult part is identifying talented footballers who belong together.
Brighton’s recruitment model appears built around that distinction.
Their fundamental question is not simply:
“Is this a good player?”
It is:
“Is this a good player for Brighton?”
That additional qualification changes everything.
Recruitment becomes connected to playing philosophy. Player development becomes connected to recruitment. Loans become connected to development. Coaching becomes connected to all three.
The result is an ecosystem rather than a collection of departments.
Players arrive with characteristics that fit the football Brighton intend to play. Young players can be developed within that framework. Established players provide continuity. When players leave, replacements are identified according to the requirements of the system rather than merely their reputation.
And when the manager changes, the institution does not have to start again.
That might be Brighton’s greatest advantage over Manchester United.
At United, every manager seems to bring a new Manchester United
Consider the succession of managers at Old Trafford.
David Moyes.
Louis van Gaal.
José Mourinho.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær.
Erik ten Hag.
Ruben Amorim.
Michael Carrick.
These are not simply different personalities.
They represent substantially different ideas about football.
One prefers possession. Another prioritises transitions. Another wants positional control. Another demands a particular defensive structure. Each manager arrives with his own tactical requirements and, inevitably, his own ideas about the players required to implement them.
The squad consequently becomes an archaeological record of previous Manchester United projects.
A player signed for one manager becomes unsuitable for the next. The club then spends heavily correcting yesterday’s recruitment before beginning tomorrow’s rebuild.
Then results deteriorate.
The manager leaves.
And the cycle begins again.
This raises a fundamental organisational question:
Does the manager implement Manchester United’s football philosophy, or does Manchester United temporarily implement the manager’s philosophy?
At Brighton, the answer increasingly appears to be the former.
At United, it has too often been the latter.
Brighton changed managers without changing identity
Brighton’s managerial history makes the contrast particularly instructive.
Graham Potter left.
Roberto De Zerbi eventually left.
Fabian Hürzeler arrived.
Yet Brighton did not abandon everything and begin again.
Their football evolved.
Hürzeler inherited elements of the possession-based structure associated with his predecessors but added his own ideas, including greater pressing intensity.
That distinction matters.
Evolution is different from reconstruction.
A healthy institution should allow a new leader to improve an existing system without requiring the organisation to reinvent itself around that individual.
Brighton increasingly appear capable of doing this.
Manchester United repeatedly appear to require reconstruction.
That places enormous pressure on whoever occupies the manager’s office.
The manager is no longer merely coaching the team.
He is expected to establish the culture, determine the football philosophy, solve recruitment problems, develop players, manage enormous personalities, satisfy commercial expectations and simultaneously win enough matches to survive while the rebuilding takes place.
Eventually, almost every Manchester United manager begins to look overwhelmed.
Perhaps that tells us something.
This does not excuse Carrick
There is a danger in making structural arguments about football clubs: they can become excuses for poor coaching.
Carrick still has questions to answer.
United should not be this easy to play against.
They should not repeatedly lose control of matches.
Their attacking volume should produce better chances.
Their defensive transitions should be better organised.
And players representing Manchester United should not consistently appear physically inferior to their opponents.
Carrick is responsible for improving those things.
The extraordinary collapse against Brighton earlier this season illustrates the problem perfectly. United raced into a 2–0 lead at Old Trafford and somehow lost 3–2.
That is not simply recruitment.
That is game management, mentality, organisation and coaching.
So the question should never become Carrick or the structure.
It is both.
The manager must be accountable for what happens on the pitch.
But the people responsible for constructing the environment around that manager must be accountable too.
The easiest decision is always to sack the manager
Manchester United may eventually conclude that Michael Carrick is not the right man.
Perhaps they will even be correct.
But replacing Carrick would answer only one question:
Is Michael Carrick good enough to manage Manchester United?
It would not answer the more consequential question:
Why does Manchester United repeatedly need a new manager to rescue Manchester United?
That is where Brighton become important.
Brighton do not appear to require a managerial saviour.
Their manager is important, but he operates within something larger than himself.
Recruitment supports him.
Scouting supports recruitment.
Development supports scouting.
The playing philosophy informs all three.
That alignment creates something Manchester United have spent enormous amounts of money trying to purchase:
institutional coherence.
And institutional coherence cannot simply be bought.
It has to be built.
The manager should not be the system
There is a wider leadership lesson here that extends beyond football.
Strong organisations do not depend entirely upon exceptional individuals.
They create systems in which talented individuals can succeed.
A great leader can accelerate an organisation. A poor leader can certainly damage one. But when every change of leadership requires the organisation to reinvent itself, the problem is no longer only leadership.
It is architecture.
Brighton’s achievement is not simply finding good managers or talented young footballers.
It is creating an environment in which the departure of either does not necessarily destroy the organisation.
That is resilience.
Manchester United, despite their extraordinary resources, have spent much of the post-Ferguson era searching for the individual capable of fixing everything.
Perhaps that search itself has been the mistake.
Sir Alex Ferguson was an extraordinary manager, but the modern game has become increasingly specialised. Recruitment, analytics, sports science, player development, squad planning and tactical preparation now require sophisticated organisational structures.
Trying to recreate Ferguson by finding another all-encompassing managerial figure may therefore be solving yesterday’s problem.
The better question is not:
Who can become Manchester United’s next great manager?
It is:
What kind of Manchester United should exist regardless of who the manager is?
Once that question has a clear answer, recruitment becomes easier.
Managerial appointments become easier.
Player development becomes easier.
Even deciding when a manager should be dismissed becomes easier, because the organisation possesses an identity against which performance can be judged.
Brighton appear much closer to that point.
Manchester United are still searching.
The lesson from Brighton
Michael Carrick may survive this crisis.
He may turn United’s season around.
Or Manchester United may decide that another manager should take his place.
But whichever decision they make, the fundamental problem will remain unless the club addresses something deeper than the dugout.
Brighton provide the uncomfortable comparison because they demonstrate what Manchester United’s resources should make considerably easier: building a coherent football institution.
The difference is not simply Carrick versus Hürzeler.
It is not simply 16th versus third.
It is not even Manchester United versus Brighton.
It is a club searching for the right manager versus a club building the right environment for managers to succeed.
And therein lies perhaps the most important lesson.
The strongest organisations do not continually search for someone extraordinary enough to overcome their dysfunction.
They build systems that allow good people to do extraordinary work.
For Manchester United, changing the manager may yet become necessary.
Changing the system is unavoidable.