Gary Neville's Warning to Michael Carrick: Avoiding the Same Trap at Manchester United
Gary Neville has warned Michael Carrick he is in danger of walking straight into the same trap that swallowed Erik ten Hag and Ruben Amorim at Manchester United – a team that can play, but cannot close.
United were in control at the Hill Dickinson Stadium. Ahead, comfortable, and seemingly easing their way to three points. Then the familiar collapse. Everton grew, the pressure cranked up, and in the 96th minute Ainsley Maitland-Niles smashed in an equaliser that felt inevitable the moment United began to retreat.
Three games into the Premier League season, United have four points and a growing narrative: they wobble when it matters most.
Neville’s warning shot
On his Gary Neville Podcast, the former United captain did not sugarcoat what he had seen. He went straight for the mentality.
"Teams think they've got a chance against them," he said. "I thought they were a little bit complacent and I was saying it after the first goal, they lacked that killer instinct before that period when Everton equalised and then they react again."
That “killer instinct” has become a recurring theme. United get themselves into winning positions, then drift. The tempo drops, the passes become safe, and opponents sense weakness. Everton certainly did.
The turning point, in Neville’s eyes, came when Carrick began to meddle with his back four.
Defensive tinkering deja vu
One of the most puzzling elements of the afternoon was Carrick’s reshaping of his defence in the closing stages. With United already fragile under pressure, the manager chose to withdraw key defenders and reshuffle a line that had, until then, largely held firm.
Neville could not hide his disbelief, drawing a direct line to the constant defensive tinkering that haunted previous managers.
He singled out the substitutions of Luke Shaw and Diogo Dalot as symbolic of the problem.
"I don't think it's going to go away and that's my big fear," Neville said. "I think conceding goals is going to chase them and hunt them down the road and I don't know how Michael deals with it because he's got his best back four on the pitch. I don't know why Shaw went off with five minutes to go – hopefully he's not injured."
For Neville, the pattern is clear: disrupt the defensive unit late on, invite pressure, and United pay for it.
Carrick fronts up
Carrick cut a calm figure after the game, but he did not try to dodge the obvious. The defending, particularly late on, is becoming a problem he can no longer file under early-season teething issues.
"Obviously, we can't ignore it," he admitted. "We need to concede fewer goals to give us a better chance of winning games. We'll certainly look at that and keep improving. There's obviously things we need to get better at as a team."
He pointed to the quality of Everton’s goals as partial mitigation, but not an excuse.
"There's been two strikes from distance really, two really good strikes from their point of view. Sometimes they fly in the top corner and more often than not they probably don't. Yeah, for sure, it is [on conceding late]."
Carrick knows the numbers will not care how pretty the goals looked on the replay. United keep giving teams life in the final minutes, and the league table will eventually reflect that.
Rashford worry adds to United’s headache
As if the defensive frailty was not enough, United left with another concern: Marcus Rashford’s fitness.
The forward, bright and direct from the left, was withdrawn in the second half. Carrick later confirmed it was not tactical.
"He felt a little bit of something, so we had to change him," the United manager said.
Rashford had been one of United’s sharpest outlets, dovetailing neatly with Shaw down that flank.
"We had good connections pretty much all over the pitch at different times of the game, and Marcus and Shaw have played together for a long period of time and have a good understanding. And you can see that, they look really dangerous down that side, and there is obviously more to come."
That “more to come” now hinges on Rashford’s recovery and Carrick’s ability to stop the same story playing on loop. Because if United cannot learn how to shut games down, how long before the pressure that finished his predecessors comes for him too?
