Clamour for Carrick
He’s working wonders in the North East and the top clubs are already circling
MIDDLESBROUGH did not know how good a manager they were getting when the club appointed Michael Carrick in October. It was not a stab in the dark, of course, but rarely has a rookie been so illuminating.
Already senior figures within the club have one eye on who might be next. That is because others have two eyes on Carrick, who has taken Boro from 21st to third in the Championship in just 17 matches.
We are told there is no get-out clause in his three-year contract and that Carrick, 41, is happy in his native North East, especially given the chairman, Steve Gibson, retains ambition for a return to the Premier League. He will back a manager he likes and trusts. Too many of his recent appointments he has not.
Gibson likes Carrick. In fact, everyone at the club does. He is a class act, yet carries a humility that transcends all classes.
Earlier this month, at the Victoria Warehouse in Manchester, he stood in front of several hundred guests at his foundation dinner — including Sir Alex Ferguson — and spoke about children living in poverty. One of those present said: ‘Wow. He had everyone’s attention. I left that night and thought, “He is going to be a top, top manager”.’
Carrick told a room full of former team-mates how they were lucky, they had many opportunities in life. The goal of his foundation, he said, was to provide others who are not so fortunate with just one opportunity. It was a powerful delivery, but not in a Churchillian way, more so because of its calmness and authenticity.
That is Carrick the man, Carrick the manager and, if we recall, Carrick the player. Ferguson loved him because could control a game with serenity amid the madness. It is the same on the touchline. One analogy inside the club is that he is like Keanu Reeves’s character in The Matrix. While the stadium spins and the match axis tilts, nothing invades Carrick’s world. He is the master of his environment. In slowing things down, he thinks quicker.
But how quickly will his managerial career move? West Ham are one of the clubs that could offer acceleration. He spent five years there as a player.
Will he spend five minutes at Middlesbrough? Sources say he will not deviate from his current course, at least not this season. His wife and two children remain in Manchester and Carrick is living in a house next to the club’s Rockliffe Hall training ground, near Darlington.
Boro striker Chuba Akpom has scored 16 times under Carrick and is the division’s top marksman with 19 goals. He spent last year on loan in Greece, at PAOK, and was on his way out of the club.
But Carrick, despite being a former striker who set all manner of scoring records on Tyneside as a junior, has not worked on any technical aspect with Akpom. Rather, he has told him he is bigger and quicker than everyone else.
In Carrick’s world, the mind has a strength the body never will. He will be making his own calculations, too. Such as plotting a career path that is likely to present many different avenues.
For until now, only Carrick knew how good he really was.