Why Middlesbrough sacked Michael Carrick - there are surely 3 clear reasons | OneFootball

FLW takes a look at three reasons why Boro sacked their head coach this week.

Michael Carrick is no longer the head coach of Middlesbrough Football Club.

The 43-year-old learnt his fate in a meeting with Boro's top brass on Wednesday morning, before an official club statement confirming the news was released that same afternoon.

It brings to an end his two-and-a-half years as Middlesbrough head coach, having arrived in October 2022 to succeed Chris Wilder at the Riverside Stadium.

The decision to sack Carrick will undoubtedly be a divisive one, with clear pros and cons for both keeping and letting him go.

Football League World takes a look at three clear reasons why Middlesbrough owner and chairman Steve Gibson decided to swing the axe on the Manchester United and England legend.

1 Defensive issues failing to be fixed

Probably the component of Middlesbrough's 2024/25 season that frustrated and angered Teessiders more than anything was Boro's problems in defense.

Carrick's side conceded some truly comical goals this past term, in what was a defensive unit that was inconsistent at best.

Failing to deal with crosses into the box, opposition players routinely finding themselves unmarked inside the penalty area, panicked half-clearances that often led to more trouble, and a real lack of bite and steeliness all contributed to an infuriating campaign at the back.

Nowhere was Middlesbrough's defensive problems in 2024/25 summed up better than at Deepdale, when Emil Riis fired home the winning goal after Boro's players inexplicably tried to play around with the ball inside their own box instead of simply clearing the ball down the pitch.

However, defensive problems haven't just been limited to this past season; In truth, it's been a trademark of Carrick's tenureship on Teesside.

For all the good work Carrick's sides have done in attack, with Boro routinely fielding one of the Championship's most potent attack forces under him, he failed to prove that he could organise and put together a watertight defense.

You simply don't win promotion to the Premier League by conceding 56, 62, and 56 goals across a league campaign as his Middlesbrough sides have done.

2 Tactical stubbornness

Ever since he stepped foot through the door in October 2022, Carrick has almost exclusively deployed one formation: 4-2-3-1.

It's been the trademark system of his Boro career, and when it worked, Middlesbrough played some of the best football that Riverside regulars had ever seen.

However, that was largely during his debut campaign on Teesside, when the likes of Chuba Akpom, Cameron Archer, Aaron Ramsey and Ryan Giles were tearing up opposition defences.

Back then, his football was fluid and fast, with Boro's flair players providing moments of individual brilliance and spontaneity. That wasn't the case this past season.

2024/25 was very much the year that opposition managers and teams found out how to exploit the weaknesses in Carrick's team and tactics, with Middlesbrough often finding no answers for well-organised defensive units and low-blocks.

There was also a frustrating number of occasions where Carrick seemed to get out-thought by his opposition number in the dugout when it came to substitutions.

Too often was Middlesbrough's boss reactive rather than proactive when utilising his options from the bench. In fact, it would often take Boro to go behind in a game for Carrick to change things, and even then, it was often like-for-like swaps rather than altering Boro's formation.

For many Boro fans, promotion went out of the picture off the back of Middlesbrough's winter transfer window, and they would largely be proven correct.

Indeed, it was a winter window that felt very similar to that of their 2016/17 one, when at a point when Boro desperately needed some big impact additions to aid their Premier League survival bid, the club made just three new arrivals in the shape of Patrick Bamford, Rudy Gestede and Adlene Guedioura respectively.

Similarly then, many Teessiders felt as though their team had come out of that window having failed to really address key needs and bolster the playing squad sufficiently, and Boro would ultimately be relegated that year.

This time around, Middlesbrough allowed a number of important players to depart the club, with Isaiah Jones, Matt Clarke (who Boro would come to regret not replacing after a resulting centre-back injury crisis), Alex Gilbert and Emmanuel Latte Lath the key exits.

As such, there was some clear holes that needed to be filled if Carrick's side were going to be able to maintain their play-off push, however, the additions that did arive largely didn't fit the bill.

Whilst the loan signing of goalkeeper Mark Travers was an excellent piece of business, Kelechi Iheanacho certainly didn't replace Latte Lath's goals and all-round impact in the team, with just one goal in 15 appearances to the Sevilla loanee's name in the second half of the campaign.

Frustration was compounded over the decision to sign Iheanacho when it was revealed that Boro's recruitment team had instead wanted Slovan Bratislava hitman David Strelec.

Morgan Whittaker arrived in a big-money move from Plymouth Argyle, but like Iheanacho, he also failed to hit the ground running in a Boro shirt, as he failed to score in any of his 16 appearances.

Ryan Giles barely saw the field after completing a loan return to the club, Samuel Iling-Junior was inconsistent but did show signs of having big potential, and George Edmundson featured very sparingly after his loan move was turned into a permanent one.

Overall, it felt like there were some real crossed wires when it came to Middlesbrough's recruitment strategy in the winter window, and as a result, many of their signings didn't work out, and left them short of what they needed to make a real play-off push.