It’s hard not to feel sorry for the man sometimes. He’s been with Manchester United for almost six years, he’s won four Premier League titles and one Champions League and yet he remains as unappreciated as a silent guff in a crowded elevator. In fact, ‘unappreciated’ is usually as good as it gets for the ex-Spurs midfielder. A surprising number of United fans, as well as a not-altogether-surprising number of rival fans, openly despise him.
One Man Utd fan on Twitter hates him so much that his Twitter name, and I’ll paraphrase for decency’s sake, is @carrick_is_not_very_good and his profile explains that he is here to “point out how painfully poor Michael Carrick is”. It’s a strange way of showing support, but repeatedly linking to YouTube videos of Carrick mistakes through the ages does at least keep him off the streets and away from sharp objects, so we shouldn’t object too strongly.
The truth is that this has been one of Carrick’s best seasons at Old Trafford, not least because he is one of the few midfielders to have remained intact throughout the campaign, biding his time on the sidelines through the early months before becoming Sir Alex Ferguson’s central stalwart. He doesn’t offer much in the way of the spectacular, unless you count his astonishing solo effort against QPR in December, but like the Millennium Falcon, he’s got it where it counts. On Monday night, he racked up 96 successful passes from his 104 attempts, a far higher figure than anyone else on the pitch.
“Statistics!” sneer his detractors, “It’s easy to rack up successful passes when you’re only kicking the ball sideways in your own half.”
To a certain extent, they have a point. Statistics can sometimes eclipse what we know to be true. Xabi Alonso’s stats weren’t actually all that impressive, but if you mention his name to a Liverpool fan, there’s a fair chance they’ll pull a battered, greying photo of the Spaniard out of their wallets and then break down in shoulder-heaving tears at the memory of their loss.
So if stats are bobbins, perhaps we shouldn’t mention the fact that Carrick made 22 successful passes from 27 in the attacking third, more than anyone else except for the advanced Ryan Giggs and the excellent Antonio Valencia. Nor should we point out that while Carrick completed 19 out of 19 sideways passes and 26 out of 26 backwards passes, he also successfully passed the ball forwards a whopping 51 times. Fulham’s top distributor Mahamadou Diarra only completed 56 passes of any kind all night.
There are some reasons to despair of Carrick sometimes. His approach to pressing is to trot in front of incoming bogies and stand very still with his arms out, presumably in the hope that they’ll run into him. In mobility terms, if Nigel de Jong is a dodgem car driven by the school bully, then Carrick is a pedalo on a sun-dappled pond, the pilot asleep with his toe dangling in the water. This doesn’t fit in with British ideas of how a midfielder should operate. Generally speaking, we like our midfielders to either have lungs like space hoppers and the defensive instincts of an Alsatian in a scrapyard, or lungs like space hoppers and the ability to lash home snapshots from the edge of the box. Carrick is something rather more laid-back and metronomic and that can be unsettling for some.
But football in the 21st century isn’t all kick ’n’ chase and if England are to have any hope of surviving the European Championships without having their pants pulled down around their ankles in the group stage, they might need someone like Carrick. Keeping the ball, not slamming it into the channels at the first sign of danger, isn’t necessarily a bad idea. One day, perhaps he’ll get the credit he deserves.
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