It’s clear that Ineos have learned from their Erik ten Hag mistake, but Carrick is not the right man to implement it.

Ineos destabilised Erik ten Hag with talks elsewhere

It was the fortnight before the FA Cup final, and the murmurs of Erik ten Hag losing his job were gaining volume quickly.

Perhaps most hauntingly, those murmurs were largely driven from inside the Ineos camp, as they were quite happy to let everyone know how they were talking to potential replacements.

Man Utd fans were extremely exasperated at having to deal with such speculation days before such a huge game against their rivals.

Ten Hag still managed to rally his team and masterminded a remarkable FA Cup final victory against Man City, but the whole thing left a sour taste in the mouth.

The circumstances weren’t helped by Ineos’ eventual decision to keep Ten Hag, which meant all the speculation to destabilise the club before the game was pointless.

The lesson to learn here was that even if you were speaking to other managers to sound out replacements, there was no need to make it a public circus.

As the speculation around Carrick’s future grows, Ineos have clearly learned from this error. Unfortunately, Carrick is not the right person to back this time.

Ineos betting on Michael Carrick is sunk-cost fallacy

Ineos will look extremely bad for sacking Carrick less than six months after giving him a permanent contract, but at the same time, every loss is making everyone look worse.

Ineos are stuck in a sunk-cost fallacy, where they keep investing more time and effort into a dead project because they have their reputations attached to it.

They have learned from their error and are no longer publicising their talks with Carrick’s potential replacements, but they should have this time.

It looks like Ineos aren’t capable of speaking to people without publicising it, because David Ornstein reports that they haven’t spoken to anyone.

The lack of preparation for a club this size borders on insanity, which is why United fans are asking for the heads of the executives and almost backing the manager out of defiance.