Howe's fiery 2023 dressing room speech resurfaces as United weigh him up to replace Carrick

Manchester United are weighing up Eddie Howe as a potential successor to Michael Carrick, whose position at Old Trafford has come under mounting pressure following a 4-1 Champions League defeat to Como that extended the club’s winless run to seven games.

Howe, 48, left Newcastle in the summer after five years at St James’ Park and was replaced by Matthias Jaissle. His availability has placed him among the candidates being considered should United move on from Carrick, who has struggled to arrest a sharp decline in form since taking charge.

The renewed interest in Howe has brought a notable piece of footage back into circulation. A clip from the Amazon docuseries We Are Newcastle United shows Howe delivering a charged pre-match address ahead of a 2023 Premier League fixture against United — one in which he used then-United manager Erik ten Hag’s own words as motivation.

“My final message today: I’m going to do something I rarely do,” Howe told his players. “But I felt upon hearing the comments, I needed to relay it to you. So comments from their manager: ‘They have the lowest ball-in-play time in the league and are quite successful at slowing the game down. It’s an annoying team to play against, so we have to find a way to play against them.’”

Howe then turned the quote on its head: “Why am I telling you that? If they want a quick game coming here, let’s f*g give it to them. Let’s blow them away with our running, let’s be intense in every action that we do, let’s make it a quick game. Let’s go.”

Newcastle won 2-0 that afternoon, with late goals from Joe Willock and Callum Wilson sealing the result and beginning a run of three consecutive victories for the Magpies over United in their head-to-head meetings.

Overall, Howe won eight of his 21 encounters with United as Newcastle manager — but crucially, six of those victories came across his final eight such fixtures, suggesting he had found a reliable formula against the club he may now be asked to lead.

Howe is generally regarded as composed and measured in his management style, a description that has also been applied to Carrick. The difference, at this stage, is results: Carrick’s United have not won in seven matches, and the pressure on the club’s hierarchy to act is intensifying.