Michael Carrick Aims to Elevate Manchester United to Champions League
Michael Carrick knows exactly what the summit looks like. He lived there often enough as a player. Now he is trying to drag Manchester United back up the mountain as a manager – and he is aiming, at the very least, to keep them dining at the Champions League table along the way.
The former midfielder, a five-time Premier League winner, was part of United's last title-winning side in 2013. Thirteen years on, he accepts that adding a 21st league crown this season would be a “jump”, but he refuses to rule it out for a squad he believes has the talent to grow into contenders.
United have set their sights on marking the club’s 150th anniversary in 2028 as champions of England again. Carrick, confirmed as permanent head coach in May after steering the team to third place last season from a difficult starting point in January, sees this campaign as another step on that long climb.
“We want to evolve as a team,” he said before Saturday’s lunchtime trip to promoted Hull, laying out the next phase of his project rather than making grand promises.
He keeps coming back to the youth in his squad. United’s dressing room is dotted with emerging players, and Carrick’s plan is to push them forward individually so the collective moves with them. That, he believes, is how a group learns to live with the pressure of expectation at Old Trafford.
The habit of winning matters. He talks about it as a feeling his players must get used to – knowing what it takes, understanding the work required, and then going again. That rhythm carried United into the top four last season. He wants it to carry them into the Champions League places again.
“Yeah, we want to be finishing in the Champions League again without doubt. It’s a challenge, it’s a big challenge,” he said.
There is no attempt to dress it up. The Premier League’s top end is crowded, with multiple clubs fighting for the same spots, but United hit the mark last year and Carrick insists they must aim to repeat it and then “keep pushing on through the season to see how it develops”.
He has a clear picture of how that season should flow: start strong, survive and thrive through the winter grind, and finish with enough power to stay in the fight. The task now is stitching those phases together into one coherent campaign.
Midfield Dynamics
At the heart of that plan lies the midfield.
Casemiro, a pivotal figure in recent seasons, has gone. Manuel Ugarte is sidelined. The core that once anchored United has shifted, and Carrick has overseen a rebuild in the middle of the pitch. Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos arrived in the summer to reinforce an area the club still hope to strengthen further with Brighton’s Carlos Baleba.
Carrick, who understands the demands of United’s midfield better than most, likes the balance he sees. He describes the squad as having a “really good balance” overall, but it is in the centre of the pitch where he believes the team’s identity will be forged.
“I think it gives you the foundation of the team,” he said of a strong midfield.
For him, the spine is everything. Consistency across 90 minutes. Consistency across months. A solid core through the middle of the pitch that allows the rest of the side to express itself.
Look at the great teams over the years, he argues, and you see the same pattern: a strong spine, a reliable base. United, in his view, now have one of their own. The job is to keep refining it – through coaching, through small improvements, through the steady development of players who are still learning what it means to dominate games at this level.
Carrick is not talking like a man satisfied with third place or one good season. He sounds like someone who sees this as the beginning of something, not the end. The question is whether this new-look midfield, and this evolving squad, can turn that conviction into a sustained challenge at the top – and whether the climb back to the summit comes faster than anyone at Old Trafford dares to admit.
