Manchester United are in crisis, and the pressure on manager Michael Carrick is growing by the day following a humiliating defeat to Como, according to Norwegian outlet Nettavisen and other Norwegian media. Captain Bruno Fernandes criticised the game plan put together by Carrick and his staff after the match. The result has intensified scrutiny on the manager and on the club's leadership.
Why it matters
The loss in Italy has pushed United's problems back into the open at a moment when the club can ill afford another managerial saga. Nettavisen's coverage, drawing on several Norwegian outlets, frames the situation as a full-blown crisis rather than a single bad result. For a club of United's stature, the question of whether to back or replace a manager carries consequences far beyond the dugout, touching on recruitment, player morale and the authority of the executives above him.
Echoes of November 2021
Manchester Evening News reported on Thursday that the scenes in Italy looked very familiar to its writers. The paper's United correspondent, Steven Railston, saw a reminder of November 2021, when United had just lost 4–1 to Watford at Vicarage Road in the Premier League under Ole Gunnar Solskjær. The Norwegian was dismissed shortly afterwards.
According to Railston, Carrick's walk towards the supporters after the Como match resembled Solskjær's five years earlier: both men approached the fans awkwardly, raised their hands and apologised. Railston noted one difference — Carrick was not booed by the crowd, whereas Solskjær was.
The Manchester Evening News writer drew further parallels between Solskjær and his former assistant. He recalled that Solskjær was deeply emotional when he lost his job, to the point of breaking down during a farewell interview, and suggested that Carrick, who took the role because he loves the club, also appears to be heading for a painful ending.
Railston was blunt about the current manager's position, saying Carrick is living on borrowed time after Wednesday's result. He described it as almost hard to comprehend how things have fallen apart, pointing out that Carrick collected more points than any other Premier League manager during his spell as interim boss last season, yet five months later his tenure looks to be over.
The journalist also argued that the United job seems to consume the managers who take it, describing a sense of a curse hanging over the role and calling it an impossible position. While he said the manager always bears ultimate responsibility, he added that fingers should also point at those at the top of the club.
Criticism of the hierarchy
United executives Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox have also come under fire recently. ESPN journalist Mark Ogden told Nettavisen that he fears the same old problems are recurring at Old Trafford: weak leadership at the top and a squad that is not good enough. He said there is no clear leader at Manchester United and that this is becoming plainly visible.
Ogden argued that the club is fumbling in the dark at least as much as it did under the previous regime. He noted that neither Berrada, the chief executive, nor Wilcox has experience of jobs of this size and under this level of pressure, and said the same applies to Carrick. According to Ogden, nobody in the Manchester United system has any track record of success.
He summed up what he sees as the root of the club's troubles as a lack of leadership, a lack of willingness to make ruthless decisions and a lack of a clear strategy.
The picture that emerges from the Norwegian coverage is of a club where the manager's position, the quality of the squad and the competence of the executive structure are all being questioned at once. Bruno Fernandes's post-match criticism of the tactical plan adds an internal dimension to the external pressure, suggesting that doubts about the approach are not confined to the stands or the press box.
What happens next will depend on how the club's leadership responds in the coming days. Watch for any signal from Old Trafford about Carrick's future, and for whether the executives facing criticism move to address the wider questions about strategy and decision-making.
