Manchester United were taught a brutal but entirely predictable lesson by Cesc Fabregas’ Como on Wednesday night and the interweb has since been awash with contradictory reports over who is in line to replace a doomed Michael Carrick at Old Trafford.

We won’t attempt to sort the fact from the fiction and in all likelihood the various media outlets have been briefed by different sources with an inside(ish) track on the INEOS rumblings. But the writing’s evidently on the wall for Carrick.

There’s never this much smoke without fire and manager’s simply don’t survive the sort of dressing room unrest exhibited first by Lisandro Martinez in his post-Atletico Madrid swipe at Jason Wilcox, and – far more pertinently to Carrick’s future – his own captain questioning his tactics after the mauling by Como.

Like Jamie Carragher, a majority will accept that while Carrick is by no means the biggest problem at a football club while long-term money-grabbers the Glazers still linger in the background behind right-wing apologist Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who leads a directorship of so-called football experts who continue to run the Red Devils into the ground, the Man Utd manager is indeed a problem who needs putting out of his misery.

The suggestion was at the end of an interim spell in which he led Man Utd back into the Champions League at a canter in the best possible conditions to achieve that goal that they couldn’t not give him the full-time role.

But we and many others consistently warned them of the dangers of appointing a manager who brought about a significant uptick in results after Ruben Amorim’s departure thanks purely to ‘knows the club’ vibes, playing Kobbie Mainoo and using Bruno Fernandes in his best position.

Ironically given his own conducting quality at the base of midfield, we have never seem Michael Carrick’s Manchester United control a game of football.

In spite of this, Paul Merson has urged INEOS to stick with Carrick as he compared the perpetual cycle of hope and failure at Manchester United with a game of snakes and ladders.

“This isn’t a shock,” Merson said on Sky Sports. “I didn’t expect them to beat Leeds at the weekend. I didn’t expect them to beat Como tonight. That’s where they are, but we’re caught in this cycle of ‘it’s Man Utd. Rooney, Ronaldo, Carrick, Giggs, Beckham, Keane, Scholes. No, far from it.

“It’s a bad result. It’s a bit like snakes and ladders. They get to the top of the ladder and then get to the snake and go back down again. It’s got to get steadied out.

“To steady the ship, I think you’ve got to keep with the same manager. He’s proven that he did get results last year. This is what I wanted to see from Michael Carrick last season. When it was going well and people were saying give him the job, it’s easy when you’re winning every week.

“It’s when you’re not doing well how the manager reacts. Now is the time to see how you are going to react.

“What do you change the manager for? You could bring in [Carlo] Ancelotti and tell him to win the league but he will fail miserably. But, if you want to come in and start learning how to walk first and go from there…

“It’s just bringing managers in and it’s the same thing. It’s Man Utd, you’ve got to win the league. You’re entitled to get top four. That’s not Man Utd anymore.

“[Antonio] Conte comes in, he will go ‘we are going to get tight at the back and start from there’. They have done it the wrong way around. They went forwards, then midfielders and said we will go defenders after.

“I think they are here for a long time. The way financial fair play is, they can’t go out and buy all the top players in the world. They are buying on a flip of a coin.”

None of us are pretending that a manager could rock up at Manchester United and win the title. No one in their right mind – and we include the deluded Red Devils hierarchy here – would give anyone that target. But it’s also absurd to suggest that they couldn’t get anyone who would get a better tune out of this group of players.

Which Premier League club would put Carrick on a shortlist for their next manager? Would any?

And while it’s fair to say that Man Utd have been down most paths in their search for a legacy manager since Sir Alex Ferguson, the last four permanent appointments have been a pair of Premier League novices in Ruben Amorim and Erik ten Hag and two Club DNA, heart over head picks in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Carrick.

Ancelotti or an equivalent more contemporary appointment like Luis Enrique feels very unlikely, but there are plenty of alternatives both in and out of contract who would make a far better fist of managing Manchester United.

We understand the club’s reticence to appoint Antonio Conte, though the players would sure as sh*t be running under him. Fabian Hurzeler is in a different tactical stratosphere to Carrick. Eddie Howe might bore the pants off us all but did a very fine job at Newcastle. Unai Emery would be a brilliant appointment if they can prise him away from Aston Villa.

Those voting for Carrick to remain at Old Trafford will always revert to one or both of two arguments: he’s not the biggest problem and Man Utd can’t just keep changing their manager.

But he is a problem and never should have been appointed by Man Utd in the first place. Ancelotti, Enrique, Hurzeler or Emery might “fail miserably” but Carrick already has and was always going to.