Butt: Carrick is the "Easy Choice" for United – But Scholes Wants to See Him Tested

Michael Carrick has backed himself into a rather enviable position since taking the Manchester United hot seat in January. The former Middlesbrough manager was supposed to be a stopgap solution, keeping the ship steady until INEOS found a marquee replacement for Ruben Amorim. Instead, seven wins from his opening ten matches have rather complicated matters.

Nicky Butt reckons the club's hierarchy now faces an "easy choice" – and that choice is Carrick himself. Speaking on The Good, The Bad & The Football podcast, the former United defender outlined the simple arithmetic: "If you don't give it to Michael then who are you giving it to? There's nobody I can think of that is jumping out, going: that's the man."

Butt highlighted the scarcity of realistic alternatives. Julian Nagelsmann remains at Bayern Munich, Thomas Tuchel has committed to England, and Carlo Ancelotti shows little appetite for a move. "There's nobody there in my eyes going, 'Well you've got to take him!'" Butt explained. "It's not like a Jose Mourinho or a Jurgen Klopp has become available."

Beyond the absence of marquee options, Butt suggested Carrick ticks another crucial box for the boardroom. "He knows the football club," Butt continued. "The people above him will like working with Michael. He's not going to cause them too much of a headache, he's not going to start being a Jose Mourinho. He's the easy choice."

Paul Scholes, however, has sounded a note of caution. The pundit acknowledged Carrick has "put himself in a much better position," but stressed that winning games becomes considerably easier when inheriting the wreckage of Amorim's tenure. "Now look, I'm not going to say it's quite easy to win games because it isn't," Scholes said. "But it's easier now to win games from what he's come into."

The real examination, Scholes believes, arrives in the autumn. "The big question will be the start of next season, the first ten or 15 games of next year, when you have to win games, you have to put yourself in a position: Champions League, the league, that's when it becomes a proper job," he explained. "We won't know if Michael is the right choice for people say two or three years but I think you'll probably know like next November."

Scholes painted a picture of a manager who currently appears composed precisely because fortune is favouring him. "He's unflappable now because everything's going alright," Scholes observed. "Let's see next November, if they've lost two or three games, all of a sudden they're seventh, eighth in the league, maybe lose a Champions League game, that's when the big test will be."

Yet Scholes stopped short of dismissing Carrick outright. "Look, I think Michael can handle it," he concluded, suggesting the 46-year-old possesses the temperament to navigate adversity should it arrive.