Michael Carrick has given Sir Jim Ratcliffe his answer on being Man Utd's next boss

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For a few fleeting, deeply confusing weeks, Manchester United had managed to convince themselves that the answer to their deep-rooted structural decay was to hire the first polite, familiar face they came across.

Michael Carrick's odd, friction-free ascent from failed Middlesbrough boss to the anointed saviour of Old Trafford feels very Ole Gunnar Solskjaer-y. His short interim reign has been a triumph of vibes: a period of calm and an application of gentle, soothing nostalgia to an open wound. He stepped into the breach, steadied the ship and brought a kind of quiet, zipped-up dignity back to the club.

But against Newcastle on Wednesday, the fever finally broke, the rose-tinted glasses were unceremoniously knocked off, and the veil was lifted to reveal a stark, unavoidable reality: Carrick just isn't that good.

It seems harsh to pour scorn on a manager who has dragged a seemingly rudderless side who were flirting with relegation last season to the top of the Premier League form table. But look closer at the fabric of United's 'resurgence', and the thread immediately starts to pull.

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The truth is, United's results over the past few weeks have been entirely reliant on a highly specific, wildly unsustainable holy trinity of footballing fortune: the ephemeral new manager bounce, an epidemic of opposition indiscipline, and more last-minute strikes than National Rail.

Let's take those structural crutches one by one. Firstly, the 'bounce' - that peculiar, well-documented psychological reset where players temporarily remember how to run and kick footballs properly simply because the man standing in front of the whiteboard has a different voice. Both Carrick and United have undeniably benefited from this atmospheric detox. But it's a sugar rush, not a sustainable diet.

Secondly, the Red Devils have been gorging themselves on the bizarrely consistent willingness of their opponents to self-immolate. Red cards for Tottenham, Crystal Palace and Newcastle have provided cushy numerical advantages that render any need to tactically outfox the opposition redundant.

In fact, over their last five games, United have had an extra man on the field for roughly a third of the total minutes - 140, to be exact - yet still managed to drop points in two of them.

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And finally, there's the reliance on late goals. Those desperate, breathless, last-gasp bailouts against Arsenal, Fulham and West Ham were unquestionably thrilling, but papered over the cracks of performances that deserved little more than a slow clap.

The 2-1 defeat by Newcastle was the moment all three of these crutches spectacularly splintered. Stripped of the honeymoon period, toothless against 10 men, and finally on the wrong end of a stoppage-time sucker punch, the underlying reality of this United side was laid bare. They are not markedly improved. They are the same structurally disjointed entity, just wearing a slightly more pleasant expression.

Which brings us to the ultimate danger. Carrick is, without a doubt, a fundamentally decent human being. He's steeped in the gallant, almost mystical 'United DNA'. For calming the storm, he deserves a warm handshake and a basket of muffins. But decency is not a tactical philosophy.

If Sir Jim Ratcliffe hands Carrick the keys on a permanent basis, United will be sleepwalking back into the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer vortex. Solskjaer was, of course, the ultimate custodian of good vibes. Much like Carrick, he arrived mid-season as a temporary, soothing balm, only to ride a fleeting, sugary wave of results all the way to a permanent contract.

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He was a man whose profound understanding of the club's history was foolishly conflated with having the elite, ruthless competence required to manage the Red Devils in the modern era - and United wasted years hoping that nostalgia and nice-guy energy would magically crystallise into a Premier League title. They cannot afford to waste time hoping for the same alchemy with Carrick.

Being a man who - to use the sport's most hollow, interminable cliché - simply, "gets it", isn't enough. United need an elite, cold-blooded tactician. Someone with grit, experience and terrifying substance. Carrick has served as an effective and necessary mood-lifter, but a change in atmosphere doesn't guarantee a change in long-term trajectory.

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