Michael Carrick can do nothing right at this moment, and even the good thing he did vs Como came at the cost of changing the only thing that was working.

The 4-1 loss to Como was the kind of performance that gets a manager sacked, so if Michael Carrick has reached this point, he has already done plenty of wrong things.

He did do the right thing against Como by giving a chance to Shea Lacey again, albeit it was too late to change anything at that point.

However, even that can’t hide the mistake he had already made by changing the only thing that was working so far this season.

Michael Carrick made pointless Bryan Mbeumo change

Man Utd have hardly been the gold standard of club sides this poor season, but at least they could count on one constant.

Bryan Mbeumo, playing as the striker, missed some clear-cut chances, but he has regularly looked like the most dangerous man on the pitch for the club.

It has been as simple as the fact that if Mbeumo doesn’t score, United don’t score, which is why Carrick’s decision vs Como was so puzzling.

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In his continued (and ill-advised) efforts to fit both Youri Tielemans and Bruno Fernandes in the same XI, Carrick created a tactical mess of player positions.

It took away Mbeumo from the position he has looked the most potent at – striker – and stationed him out wide on the right to create chances for nobody in particular.

The result was an expectedly disjointed performance where none of the forward players quite knew where they were supposed to be on or off the ball.

It even hurt United’s defence, as there was no cohesion in pressing, with Mbeumo often covering both, the left-back and the centre-back, while pressing the opposition.

Shea Lacey’s sub was pure desperation

For all the talk of Carrick not wanting to play Amass and Lacey because this was an unstable team, the pair came on when the team had already conceded four goals. How’s that for unstable?

It’s clear that the Lacey sub was the last throw of the dice from Carrick, who has come across as scared and safety-first, two words that should never be attached to a Man Utd manager.

A brave manager starts Harry Amass instead of playing Noussair Mazraoui out of position, and drops Bruno Fernandes for Lacey just to jolt the team.

Instead, he kept hiding behind the experienced players, even set them up to fail, and when nothing worked, threw the youngsters on in a last roll of the dice out of pure desperation.

The board made it difficult for him to succeed after that transfer window, but he’s doing a fine job of making a difficult job impossible with these decisions.