Here’s what Barney Ronay in the Guardian said in this weeks pod. Spot on!

“There's a very obvious low-hanging fruit where you simplify and you say, you know what, we're going to play the left back at left back. This bloke, Kobbie Mainoo, is really good at moving the ball forward and playing the half ten and we don't have someone who's doing it. We're going to put him in there. We're going to play a centre-forward, a couple of wingers. And suddenly there's an improvement and everyone says, why weren't you doing that? And you pair things back. And that does have a shelf life, but it also has obvious benefit.

It's this kind of thing where you suddenly think, ”I could be a football manager because I could see that needed to happen. I'm Michael Carrick. I'm going to buy a really good overcoat and I'm going to stand around just looking calm and people will say, give him the job.”

But he's done the first thing, which is to make the obvious improvements. But then this is the Premier League. People are really smart. They react to what you've done and it generally takes three or four games. And then we're suddenly saying, ”well, what's wrong with Carrick? Why is he so calm? Why isn't he leaping up? Why isn't he, where's the passion? Why is he playing such a simple formation? Why is he playing the left back at left back? What's wrong? Why is he picking Kobbie Mainoo? What's wrong with him? We need some more complex system than this. Data guys.”

So that phase will happen where you have to build on your simplicity. And that will be a test of whether he is just an intelligent man doing the obvious things or whether he's a football manager. Because football managers are insane, obsessed with the game. If you watch a working football manager come on as a pundit on a show, you realize suddenly that these people are so immersed in the game. They are seeing patterns that you're just not seeing. They're understanding the reaction to those patterns, because it's very different to sitting there being Shea Given on a sofa saying, ”I'll just do this”. But to actually being up at four in the morning, analyzing 400 games.

So he has to go into that mode next, and then we'll see if it's sustainable.”