The ‘Manchester United Way’ is more folklore than theory, but there is something to the magic – The Athletic
The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 winter transfer deadline.
Whoever Manchester United appoint in the summer, after Michael Carrick’s interim stint in charge finishes, the club will be onto their seventh permanent head coach in just over 12 years — and the third in the past four seasons.
A predictable narrative emerged after Ruben Amorim’s 63-match tenure ended earlier this month: about Manchester United’s identity, the supposed ‘way’ they play, and just how far below the self-imposed expectations this great, heavyweight club have landed.
“What is the United Way?” and “Can anyone recapture the old magic from the Golden Era?” are the perennial, existential questions. This discussion reared its head a little more than a year ago when Erik ten Hag was sacked, and it feels condemned to repeat until United win their 21st league title.
Carrick’s two victories, both against ‘big six’ rivals, have been significant. Manchester City were beaten by two counter-attacking goals. Arsenal came undone thanks, in part, to two excellent long-range finishes from Patrick Dorgu and Matheus Cunha. Tomorrow’s meeting with Fulham promises a different sort of test.
The “United Way” is less a codified set of rules and more football of the “I know it when I see it” variety. Carrick and his coaching staff have brought back some of the old intangible qualities that many associate with United, but it is far too early to consider them ‘back’.
This debate is made more complicated by the nature of Sir Alex Ferguson’s success as a manager.
His 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League wins, one Cup Winners’ Cup, five FA Cups and four League Cups over 26 years at United came about through constant reinvention and change, rather than refining and iterating any singular strategic vision.
There are, at best, three core principles to Ferguson’s success which the club feel a need to (and fans want to) uphold:
- Win
- Play fast and attacking football
- Provide a clear pathway from the academy to the first team, so those young players can contribute to points one and two
Youth. Courage. Success. A club motto so often repeated, it was written on the nape of the 2021-22 home shirt.
Football has changed on a macro and micro level since Ferguson’s retirement in 2013. United made multiple missteps following his departure, along with former chief executive David Gill, but simply attempting to revert to old methods has not been enough to restore them to their perch.
United have struggled to fill the void left by Sir Alex Ferguson (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
The bar to win the league has gone up. United reached at least 80 points in all of Ferguson’s final eight seasons, in which they won five titles.
From 2013-14 onwards, they have averaged 66 points in the 12 completed seasons and only once broken 80 — in 2017-18 when they finished second on 81 points, and Jose Mourinho needed David de Gea to put in one of the greatest goalkeeping seasons in Premier League history.
Meanwhile, the last 12 title winners averaged 91 points. This term is a slight exception to the rule — the eventual champions this season will probably finish on 85 points — but the title race is more competitive in the Premier League than in Europe’s other major leagues. United have struggled to mount repeated title charges since Ferguson’s retirement. In 2024-25 they finished with half the points (42) of champions Liverpool.
This is why Carrick’s first words as temporary coach feel symptomatic of the problem. “I know what it takes to succeed here,” he told reporters. “My focus is on helping the players to reach the standards that we expect at this incredible club.”
Really, though, the standards have seen United’s recent success limited to cup competitions. Two FA Cups (2016 and 2024), two League Cups (2017 and 2023) and one Europa League (2017) did plenty of crack-papering — even if they have lost four of the nine finals they have contested since Ferguson left. It is the sort of success that would define many a club’s golden era. At United, there is a bigger, often unspoken, expectation.
“Any cup competition can give you a trophy but sometimes it’s more of an ego thing,” Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said as head coach in March 2021, towards the end of a season where United finished second by 12 points, which is the closest they’ve been to top spot post-Ferguson.
“It’s not like a trophy will say: ‘We’re back’. No, it’s the gradual progression of being in and around the top of the league and the consistency. The odd cup competition can hide the fact you’re still struggling.”
That is best captured by their ClubElo rating, a metric used principally in chess to measure performance rating over time, gaining points for wins and losing them for defeats.
United have found it difficult to use their victories in cup competitions as fuel for league success. The most recent victory occurred in 2024 after they beat Manchester City at Wembley, with goals from academy graduates Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo — two youngsters who were in United’s FA Youth Cup-winning side just two years prior.
Their approach that day actually did typify the three core principles, twice scoring from quick attacks (nine minutes apart) with just 27 per cent possession. Five different United academy graduates played: Marcus Rashford, Scott McTominay, Jonny Evans (as a sub), plus the goalscorers.
Ten Hag, the architect, earned a stay of execution. United had crumbled that term to an eighth-placed finish, only earning European football because of their cup win.
Before a ball had been kicked in 2023-24, Ten Hag wanted them to become “the best transition team in the world”, which they had the personnel for in an attacking sense (especially Rashford and Bruno Fernandes). They struggled, though, when asked to transition into defence.
United teams of the past decade have been good at seizing on the unintended errors of opponents. They have been less good at breaking down deep defences and forcing opponents into making mistakes in the manner of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
Modern champions have to dominate and take games to teams with possession and pressing. However, United’s best moments and matches continue to come from direct, counter-attacking football against other major Premier League sides.
They won this way against Liverpool at Anfield in October (under Amorim) and, significantly, beat their rivals City in Carrick’s first game, out-creating and out-shooting Guardiola’s side while having just 32 per cent possession. Victory over Arsenal was achieved with 44 per cent.
So this was not the start of a ‘new era’ under Carrick, instead making for the second instance this term (after the 2-1 win at Anfield) where United have created five or more big chances with less than 40 per cent possession. There are only five other instances of other teams doing that in 2025-26.
5+ big chances and under 40% poss, 25-26
TeamOpponentPossessionResult
Liverpool
29%
2-1W
Man City
32.50%
2-0W
Chelsea
33.10%
2-2D
Man City
33.20%
2-1W
Liverpool
34.80%
3-2W
Liverpool
36.40%
2-1W
Chelsea
37.70%
2-1W
In some ways, Amorim’s time at United was similar to Ten Hag’s. He also left several months after a cup final — although he lost his in the Europa League, beaten 1-0 by Tottenham Hotspur.
A dejected Amorim after last season’s Europa League final (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
If anything, Amorim proved too defiantly wedded to his own ‘way’, a 3-4-2-1 system which had to force-fit players into unnatural roles. This included playing Fernandes in a deeper role, giving him the burden of ball progression, which he can excel at, but limiting his final-third output — shown best by him thriving at No 10 in the win over City. The likes of Noussair Mazraoui, Amad and Mainoo were all used in various positions.
Yet it was Amorim’s reluctance to engage with that third bullet point of the United DNA laid out at the start of this article — the embracing of academy talent — which proved almost as costly.
He was reluctant to promote academy players into his first team squad, with The Athletic reporting that one senior member of United’s staff did not recall Amorim ever attending an academy game at a stadium during his tenure.
Amorim used the word “entitled” when discussing young players in press conferences but United’s most talented academy players, historically, still break out during periods of adversity: Rashford under Loujis van Gaal in 2016; Jesse Lingard and, initially, Scott McTominay with Mourinho (more so McTominay when Solskjaer was manager); Mainoo for Ten Hag in 2023-24.
A report from CIES Football Observatory, a research group based in Switzerland, identified the clubs at which top-five league European players had developed (spent three years or more between ages 15 and 21) over two decades between 2005 and 2025.
United were the biggest English club for players trained, and the fourth-biggest in Europe behind Barcelona, Real Madrid and Lyon — 100 players had come through the United academy across two decades.
For more than 88 years, United have had at least one academy graduate in every matchday squad. It is a record they make an effort to maintain, even in more difficult sections of a season.
Last November, Amorim called up Jack Fletcher from the under-21s to replace the injured Mainoo before a game against Spurs. That Fletcher was an unused substitute became a talking point. Are United maintaining the record for the sake of it, or is there a sincere belief that the academy should be an integral piece of the club’s strategy?
The famed youth system, once a source of envy for others in the Ferguson years, entered a low period in the 2010s. Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City overtook the work of those at Carrington.
The club has sought to correct that, with the aforementioned 2022 FA Youth Cup success — earned by a 3-1 win over Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford — serving as good evidence of the academy’s turnaround. (For an in-depth look at United’s academy read this 2024 piece from The Athletic’s Andy Mitten).
To an extent Amorim was handed a chalice which has felt forever poisoned. Ferguson did not want David Moyes, but rather one of Klopp, Guardiola, Van Gaal or Mourinho to succeed him in 2013. All were unavailable for various reasons.
Opting for Moyes took him out of a long-term success project at Everton, similarly to how Ten Hag and Amorim arrived off the back of league dominance and European achievement with Ajax and Sporting CP.
But England has a 20-team league where the bottom-half teams are much better than anywhere else — something Amorim seemed surprised by — plus two domestic cups and no winter break (the matches intensify over Christmas and New Year).
Moyes, Ferguson’s successor, didn’t even last a season (Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)
Football fans and columnists point out the importance of club DNA and traditions with Barcelona and Ajax, but those are two clubs attempting to work to a much clearer set of principles refined by Johan Cruyff. The Dutch legend made no secret of how and why he wished football to be played in such a way.
Ferguson was less forthcoming about his grand plans which might have made it harder for his successors to replicate his winning recipe.
Both Ajax and Barcelona are also powerhouses in leagues with fewer title rivals. Indeed, Ajax’s most recent institutional crisis was born from a misguided attempt to use season upon season of Champions League broadcast money to become the Bayern Munich of the Eredivisie. Instead, recruitment mistakes saw their recent troubles compared to United’s since 2013.
Perhaps United’s core principles have more in common with Bayern and Real Madrid. The footballing golden era that Ferguson brought to Old Trafford included plenty of talented teams and creative expression, but the most important element was their winning record. Champions League qualification is the aim now.
Any new version of the ‘United Way’ should have senior executives put winning first and foremost. The Premier League does not award additional points for style.
