Manchester United’s capitulation at Chelsea paints picture of a club that barely exists | Barney Ronay

Michael Carrick is now a little more pre-doomed, pre-sacked, but is miles away from being the actual story On and on and on. And then on just a little bit more it would seem. Manchester United: always crashing in the same Carrick. The obvious question after this 2-0 defeat against Chelsea is how much longer United will continue to lose games under the current manager, as opposed to losing games under the next one. But it is also a mark of the dysfunction of this club, its ambient levels of sadness, that this matters so little.

Here we have another staging point in the progress of the Manchester United ghost ship, where even sacking a manager carries almost zero tension, where it feels like something that has basically already happened. This is a club that can make you into a relic of the past even while you’re still walking around taking training and drawing a salary. Michael Carrick is miles away from being