Carragher and Neville agree Carrick is shoehorning Fernandes into wrong role at United

Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville and Micah Richards delivered a united verdict ahead of Manchester United’s trip to Elland Road: Michael Carrick’s midfield-heavy system is coming at a direct cost to Bruno Fernandes, the club’s best player.

The debate centres on United’s summer overhaul of their engine room. Carlos Baleba, Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos all arrived at Old Trafford and all three started in the midweek defeat to Atletico Madrid, with Fernandes pushed out to the right flank. Carrick repeated the approach against Leeds, prompting the pundits to question the logic before a ball had been kicked.

“The problem when you put three midfield players in there is what you do with your best player, Fernandes,” Carragher said. “He won’t be happy playing in a wide position. You’re almost shoehorning in your best player as well, and that can maybe cause a problem going forward.”

Richards widened the critique beyond Fernandes, pointing to a structural issue in how the new midfield trio functions as a unit. “What’s happening when they do that? They’ve got big, massive gaps in the middle,” he said. “There’s no point Baleba running out and pressing if the rest of the midfield don’t come with him as well. They need to work as a collective — that’s Man United’s biggest problem in the games I’ve watched this season.”

Neville drew a direct line to Ruben Amorim’s previous attempts to solve the same puzzle, noting that the former United manager had already tried and failed to make Fernandes work in a wide role. “There was a time where Amorim was playing Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro in midfield,” Neville said. “When he wanted to make it more solid, he’d put someone else in there and push Bruno wide. We’ve been down this road, we’ve seen it, it’s not ideal.”

Neville was blunt about what the positional compromise signals. “When you’re moving your best player — the PFA Player of the Year, the best player in the league last year — into a wide area, you know that you’re struggling.”

The comments reflect a broader uncertainty about how Carrick intends to integrate three new midfielders without sacrificing the influence of the player who carried United through much of last season. Whether the system can be refined quickly enough to get the best out of all four remains the central question of United’s early campaign.