Looks like Carrick Staying

JM14 said:
How many other clubs get worse year on year but keep hold of their manager?

Real small time mentality, what does he actually have to do to get sacked?

Look forward to having the same discussions two months into the season.

On the bright side at least we aren’t quite bad enough to go down.
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He's a nice guy.
 
Cardiffdaffs said:
Fans are never patient. I’m amazed Steve Gibson has remained so this time not that that is a bad thing. I hope the trust he places in MC, should we keep him, is repaid. It’s a ballsy move but possibly worth the gamble.
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I felt Carrick should have gone after the Watford game. It was obvious by the reaction after the full-time whistle that a lot of fans had turned. Make no mistake, those boos weren't just aimed at the players.

Although I was a bit disappointed that Gibson decided to stick with Carrick, I could also understand the rationate behind wanting to at least give him the full season. If he'd sacked him and a new manager had come in and got us nowhere near the playoffs Gibson would always have been left wondering "what if", as would Carrick.

For me though, Gibson's stance should have been you've got until the end of the season. If you don't make the playoffs I'll be looking to make a change. It's pathetic to think that so many other clubs did us a favour during the run-in and we still only managed to accumulate 4 points from our final 6 games. I'd say we had the easiest run-in out of all the teams chasing the playoffs as well.

I think fans would be more willing to be patient if we weren't seeing regression under Carrick.
 
Little piece from Drury.


I'm carrying on."

Those were Michael Carrick's words to me in the bowels of Coventry City's CBS Arena in the minutes after Middlesbrough's 2-0 defeat had condemned them to another season in the Championship.

A win would have taken Boro into the top six and a play-off semi-final against Sheffield United. Instead, attention this week has centred on Carrick's future as the club embark on an internal review into a season that began with talk of pushing for automatic promotion and ended mired in mid-table mediocrity.

Boro's finishing position of 10th, four points outside the play-off places, cannot be viewed as anything other than a failure.

Head of football Kieran Scott told BBC Radio Tees Sport last September this was a season the club had identified as being an opportunity because of the particular nature of the Championship.

As it played out two things became clear. Firstly, Scott and Boro's hierarchy were absolutely correct. Leeds United, Burnley and Sheffield United excepted, the division was wide open. Secondly, Boro were making an almighty mess of things.

The points total required to make the top six this season was the lowest in more than a decade, yet Boro finished on 64 points, four behind Bristol City in sixth.

They finished 12 points behind Sunderland in fourth and found themselves below Blackburn Rovers, Millwall and West Bromwich Albion too.

For a bit of context, when Boro won at Blackburn at the beginning of April, Rovers were winless under new manager Valerien Ismael. The Rovers fans were in revolt and everyone confidently declared their season was over. Boro ended up two points beneath them.

Last summer's transfer window was widely regarded as Middlesbrough's best for years, but fans' frustrations built throughout the season as they watched a talented squad win back-to-back Championship games on just four occasions, with one of those incorporating their only three-game winning run of the season.

Then there was the January transfer window.

Striker Emmanuel Latte Lath was sold to Atlanta United for a club record fee of £22.5m, money that precious few Championship clubs can turn down. They did it late in the window and replaced him with Sevilla loanee Kelechi Iheanacho.

To say it did not work out for Iheanacho and Boro would be an understatement. One goal and two assists was the sum total of his output, and by the end of the season he was being jeered from the pitch by his own fans and booed on to it when introduced as a substitute.

Carrick also pushed for the signing of previous loanee Ryan Giles, who had been a great success two seasons ago. This time was different though and long before the season's end Giles had been displaced by another loanee, Sam Illing-Junior.

Injuries also hampered Boro considerably. Liverpool loanee Ben Doak lit up the Championship with his displays in the first half of the season, but his January injury deprived the team of his attacking verve and their only point of difference.

They also endured a sustained spell where there was not a fit senior central defender at the club. That put the spotlight on the manager's decision not to sign a replacement for Matt Clarke when he was allowed to join Derby County in January.

Despite all these issues, going into the final three games Boro's fate was in their own hands. Cue a 2-1 defeat by Sheffield Wednesday from a position of 1-0 up and a missed penalty kick, a goalless draw against a Norwich City side who had just sacked their manager, and then the final day loss at Coventry.

Fans have bemoaned a style of football that was often slow, passive and predictable. Opposing managers queued up to lavish praise on Boro's squad while adding "we knew how they were going to play".

This team has a soft centre. Possibly the most damning statistic among many unfavourable numbers is that on the 18 occasions they conceded the first goal of the game they came back to win only twice, whilst losing 13 times. Both of those comeback wins came against newly promoted Oxford United.

Carrick is well liked by chairman Steve Gibson, who backed his man after February's home defeat by Watford, a game that seemed to signal the end of the road. However, with fans patience running out - this week's online poll in a local paper had 68% of respondents wanting Carrick sacked – the decision over whether to maintain his faith in his head coach is far from straightforward.

Nearly three years into the job, Carrick is the longest-serving manager in the Championship - we will find out in the coming days if that is a record he can hang on to.
 
Laughing said:
To be honest that article reads like a rehash of dozens of posts on here.
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It does in some ways. But I would suggest it leans more with the Carrick out lot than Carrick in. Just my take anyways.

But yeah, it's nothing we don't already know. I'm just hoping he's heard something.
 
Block21 said:
It does in some ways. But I would suggest it leans more with the Carrick out lot than Carrick in. Just my take anyways.

But yeah, it's nothing we don't already know. I'm just hoping he's heard something.
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You are right that it seems to lean towards Carrick losing his job.
 
If Carrick fails next season and is sacked when do people start pointing fingers at Scott and Gibson?

Or do we just keep appointing managers and then blaming them for every single mistake that happens at the club?

We have a theme running through the club that everyone is nice, let's sign these young players then sell them onto to bigger clubs. Lath has a good season then we can't get him out the door quick enough.

Top 10 is ok if we play nice football, it's all about the long term plan and someday we'll get promoted. It doesn't matter if we get promoted next season or in 10 years time it'll happen one day.

I don't mind a long term plan and being patient but at some point we've got to try and build a team that's serious about promotion. We know that we've got to sell sometimes to buy but there's certain outgoings like Lath which just write the season off. Why couldn't we hold onto him until the end of the season, did we need the money that badly?

Carrick has been a major disappointment this season and he's starting to look very one dimensional as a manager. But I feel like when he's replaced everything rides on Kieran Scotts ability to buy good players and I think he's failed as badly as Carrick in the last 12 months and no one seems to talk about it because he's made big profits on a couple of players.

Gibson and Scott need to decide if the priority is one big transfer sale a window or building a promotion team. Because Scott is good at one and poor at the other.
 
If Gibson isn't going to give Carrick the entirety of next season, regardless of the start we have then there is little point keeping him. You can't work short term.

Personally I would keep him. He is one cog in a machine that misfire towards the end of last season. Losing Doak and lath were key to that as was removing all the pace from the team.

My thoughts are that there isn't a manager available who would have succeeded at Boro last season given the injuries and mid-season transfer policies.
 
Uwefuchs said:
If Carrick fails next season and is sacked when do people start pointing fingers at Scott and Gibson?
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Oh that started a long time ago.

Patently Scott let us down in January. But that is probably his first bad recruitment "batch" possibly excused by January always being a tricky period to buy in? Gibson has always garnered ire and flack on here and elsewhere. Those of us who try to take his side mostly do so because we believe that although individual decisions may not have worked out that he always tries to act in the best interests of the club (often to the exclusion of the best interests of Steve Gibson)

I don't have a particular preference sack/retain but I think that it is simplistic to put all the blame on Michael Carrick and think that replacing him with A N Other manager would be the magic ingredient we need to get ourselves moving.

It is an important decision and one that the powers that be are right to take their time over. One of the benefits of separating recruitment from coaching is that we can get on with that regardless of whether MC stays or not.
 
Muttley said:
Oh that started a long time ago.

Patently Scott let us down in January. But that is probably his first bad recruitment "batch" possibly excused by January always being a tricky period to buy in? Gibson has always garnered ire and flack on here and elsewhere. Those of us who try to take his side mostly do so because we believe that although individual decisions may not have worked out that he always tries to act in the best interests of the club (often to the exclusion of the best interests of Steve Gibson)
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The gazette were saying that Iheanacho, Edmundson and Giles were all players Carrick pushed for. Also that he signed off on Clarke going and didn't want a 4th centre back bringing in.

Which would leave Whittaker, Illing Junior and Travers as Scott (well the recruitment team) picks.

Illing Junior and Travers have been respectively decent and very good. Obviously Whittaker poor so far though.

I wonder if Carrick will have a reduced say on recruitment moving forward as part of any changes.
 
Change the tune he’s not going anywhere.

Gibson owns the club, he invests heavily into it and he can do what he likes with it so unless your going to make him an offer he can’t refuse then perhaps you should think twice before criticising him and the way he works. I’m not saying he’s made all the right calls or that he cannot be blamed for any of them but he has to deal with the consequences and financial implications. As supporters we just end up watching football in a different league that’s all, he has to put his own money into the club and pay for any mistakes he makes so If you don’t like that then perhaps your supporting the wrong club. We could have a far worse owner just ask any Blackburn or Sheff Wed fans and as perceived by the rest of the footballing world Gibson is one of the good ones(except by Derby maybe).

Stop hanging onto the hope Carrick is to be sacked as he’s not. If he was then he would be gone by now and a new manager being lined up. People trying to suggest Steve Cooper are in cloud cookoo land as he would want mega money and a large transfer kitty, something like what a team with parachute payments would be able to afford.
 
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