Great, now the parents are arguing. It was pretty clear when Bruno Fernandes was hauled off in the 65th minute, as Manchester United were thumped by Como in the Champions League, that he was far from happy. He had spent his evening attempting to lead the United press, forlornly chasing after the ball like a terrier who had been tasked with closing down a flock of pigeons in a vast town square. Fernandes, like his United team-mates, got nowhere near it and Como toyed with them.
Before his substitution for Joshua Zirkzee, the captain had also wasted his energy by performatively flapping his arms and looking over his shoulder with the exasperated expression of ‘what are you guys doing back there?’ He trudged around the side of the pitch and returned to the bench without acknowledging his manager. Fernandes’ disappointment is not exactly unexpected given it was a chastening night for United. But nor did we expect him to come out so strongly in his criticism at full-time.
“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," Fernandes said. 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 uncomfortable.”
Carrick appeared bemused, but there was an end-of-days look to United’s defeat and an end-of-days feel to the way Carrick marched over to the remaining United fans in Como to apologise at full-time. It was a gesture that, as the cycle of the United circus continues to spin, had striking similarities to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer holding his hands up to the United fans just days before he was sacked following the 4-1 defeat at Watford five years ago. A proud and respected former player left hurting by the decline at Old Trafford? It’s happening again, and everyone appears to have accepted Carrick’s days are numbered.
Perhaps the surest sign of that is not just Fernandes rounding on his manager but Carrick actually saying something interesting in his response when asked about his captain’s comments. “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,” he replied, pointedly.
But it has taken less than 150 days since the end of last season for disharmony to fester and the cracks in the dressing room to show. Carrick took over from the dismal reign of Ruben Amorim in January and inspired United's finishing third in the Premier League. The transformation of their form led to Fernandes finishing being named as the country’s player of the year. But United are now seven games without a win. Fernandes looks exhausted to be playing three times a week, as a result of their qualification for the Champions League.
You could say Fernandes is genuinely hurt at how quickly things have unravelled, again. He has turned 32 this season and the majority of his United career has played out in this lingering sense of doom. But there was optimism heading into the summer after finishing third and Carrick laying the foundations; it is not his fault, or Carrick’s, that United appear to have messed up their midfield rebuild and failed to sign a left back or a back-up striker in the summer, which is the reason that Fernandes has been once again shifted out of his preferred No 10 position.
But it is significant that the Portuguese has rounded upon Carrick in the same manner of Lisandro Martinez’s explosive criticism of Jason Wilcox a week ago. Martinez took the extraordinary step of criticising those upstairs and singling out United’s technical director for not backing Carrick in the transfer market. Martinez’s rant struck a chord with the United support, but he was still swiftly frog-marched into a Carrington office for a meeting with Wilcox, CEO Omar Berrada, and Carrick before apologising.
Carrick hailed a “fresh start” after the 1-1 draw at Leeds on Sunday. He insisted, only last Friday, that his players had their best training session under him. But that facade of a harmonious camp has unravelled as quickly as this disjointed United side and morale is on the floor. Fernandes has reverted, quite stunningly, really, from last season's talisman to the demonstrative, moaning figurehead, whose this-is-all-quite-crap energy appears to be incredibly unhelpful in a time of crisis.
And of course the roots of United’s permacrisis run much deeper than Carrick, as Martinez alluded to last week in Madrid. Like his Argentinian team-mate, Fernandes could have come out and criticised the United owners and their hierarchy and torched the decisions and processes that have led to the club’s worst start to a season since 1986. But Martinez tried that last week and it was like shouting into the wind.
Instead, Fernandes chose to expose what appears to be division in a fractured dressing room, and even Carrick appeared resigned into accepting there’s no coming back from that.
