Tielemans says Man Utd squad want Carrick to stay

Youri Tielemans has said the Manchester United squad do not want Michael Carrick replaced, and that what the group needs now is stability rather than another change in the dugout. Speaking to TNT Sports before Saturday's game at Chelsea, the midfielder said he joined the club partly because of Carrick and that the players are "very happy for him to stay".

It is the clearest public backing a United player has given Carrick since the club decided this week to keep him in charge. For us, it also moves the spotlight. If the dressing room wanted him kept, the dressing room now has to play like it.

Tielemans on Carrick, in full

This is what Tielemans said, as reported by ESPN on Friday:

"I came here partly because of him, because he wanted me here, he wants me to help the team out.

"So I am very happy for him to stay and the whole group, we don't want a sudden change.

"We don't want a big change that is going to disrupt things more than they are, we just need stability, we need to keep working hard and then it's going to turn at some point."

Tielemans arrived from Aston Villa in the summer, one of three midfielders signed alongside Carlos Baleba and Andrey Santos. United spent £155m on the three and added no new defenders. Tielemans is a Carrick signing in the plainest sense, and he said as much.

Why Carrick is still in the dugout

Carrick was widely expected to become the first Premier League manager sacked this season after Sunday's 3-0 home defeat by Bournemouth, which followed a 4-1 loss at Como in the Champions League. Instead, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the Glazers, Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox sat down and decided to keep him for the trip to Stamford Bridge, with United's chiefs said to have disagreed over who should replace him.

We covered what Carrick said about that reprieve in his pre-Chelsea press conference. The numbers behind the pressure have not changed since. United have won one of their eight Premier League games and are 16th.

This is also the manager who took over on a temporary basis last season, took United into the top four and back into the Champions League, and was given the job permanently for it. That record is why a large part of the squad, Tielemans included, still believes in him.

Stability only works if the players run

Tielemans is right on one thing, in our view. Sacking a head coach in late October with no agreed successor would be change for the sake of being seen to act. Erik ten Hag made a similar point last week, and he knows better than most what a constant churn of managers does to a squad.

Stability can't become shorthand for patience with these performances, though. The row with Bruno Fernandes started over exactly this. After Como, Fernandes criticised the system, and Carrick reportedly responded by suggesting his tactics only work when players run enough. That exchange told us where the manager thinks the problem lies.

Saying you want the manager to stay costs nothing. Running for him at Stamford Bridge does.

Carrick, for his part, insists the mood at Carrington is right. "The boys, I have to say, are hungry," he said. "We're hurting because we haven't won enough football games, but there's an intensity, there's a bit of an edge, there's a disappointment, there's a hunger to do better, for sure."

Fernandes is the test of whether it's real

The most telling line from Carrick this week was about his captain. He said:

"Absolutely no issue with Bruno [Fernandes]. We've moved forward, we look forward to the game.

"He's committed to this football club, he has been for a long period of time, as I have done, and between us and the players and the staff, we've got to pull through this and when we do, we will be stronger for it."

Fernandes was an unused substitute against Bournemouth. On Friday afternoon he posted a pre-match poster for the Chelsea game on his Instagram stories, reportedly his first social media activity since the fallout. It's a small thing. We'd still rather read it as a captain getting on with it than one sulking. As we argued before Leeds, dropping him was never the answer to what is wrong around him.

If Tielemans speaks for "the whole group", then Fernandes is part of that group. The best evidence that this dressing room really is behind Carrick would be the captain starting, running and leading at Chelsea.

A promise as much as support

The players have got the manager they say they wanted. That makes Tielemans's words a promise as much as a show of support, and it will be judged on Saturday at 12:30 GMT, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe expected in the stands.

Roma follow at Old Trafford on Tuesday, and United go into that run still without Benjamin Šeško, who is expected to be out until January. There is no hiding place for a squad that has just publicly backed its coach. We think Tielemans has the argument right. Now he and his teammates have to prove it with the intensity Carrick says he has seen in training.

Picture: Youri Tielemans playing for Belgium against the USA at the 2026 World Cup, by Bryan Berlin via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped to 16:9.