Predicting the next manager of every club – continued: who replaces Newcastle-bound Carrick at Man Utd?

Michael Carrick has the platform to finally realise his Newcastle ‘dream’, while his eventual and ultimate replacement at Manchester United is clear.

With the Premier League manager rankings for 2025/26 receiving an extensive update , it is time now to look further ahead at the successors to those current incumbents.

Some clubs have an almost transparent succession plan, whereas others are slightly less easy to predict.

The immediate coaching futures of Arsenal, Fulham and everyone in between have been forecast too , with equally absurd results.

While Daniel Farke does appear to have cracked the Premier League code at the third time of asking after figuring out that not managing Norwich is the first part of any top-flight equation, there will be a need to refocus on elite-level Championship expertise when this current Leeds run definitely fizzles out.

Keeping Farke is the obvious option there; no manager has won England’s second tier as often (three times). But that might not land well with the Elland Road faithful.

Six other managers have won that title twice: Mick McCarthy, Kevin Keegan, Peter Reid, Fred Everiss, Joe Mercer and Terry Venables. Two of those have long since passed, two literally had their go at Leeds in the same calendar year over two decades ago, one has become Steve Coogan and the other has become a trusted voice in the meat management industry.

Leeds will thus need to think outside the box and look further afield for a candidate who can display Championship mastery in the future. And when they do appoint Frank Lampard it will be a valuable experiment in what happens when a manager and his fanbase share an immediate and deeply embedded mutual hatred .

For fear of too thoroughly checking the dental health of a gift horse: Xabi Alonso .

When Manchester City come to make their first managerial appointment in at least a decade, they have a range of different options to pick from.

Luis Enrique would probably be the closest comparison to the 2016 iteration of Pep Guardiola as the gilded supercoach with a distinct style and Barcelona ties, who would be arriving from a fellow member of Europe’s top table with abundant experience.

Alonso could be at the prototype stage of that evolution chain and Manchester City might be tempted to invest in that stock early, unperturbed by his Real Madrid demise .

That would bring a Guardiola student to the Etihad, but if Manchester City are intent on following the former player route then Vincent Kompany is right there, while Enzo Maresca has a history at the club too.

In Pep Lijnders they even have something close to a continuity candidate who Guardiola has already joked about a job swap with .

But there is a mark against all of their CVs: none of them have ever managed in England’s lower leagues, so would be sharks in a pond once those 115 charges are finally upheld to rock Manchester City to their very core.

In which case, Phil Parkinson steps in as a Premier League champion with Wrexham, ready to rampage through the divisions all over again.

The one guarantee is that whenever Manchester United do even vaguely consider their managerial situation, the bat senses of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will tingle and transport him to Carrington and the surrounding areas with a photography crew at the ready to capture his coincidentally happy disposition.

Being overlooked for Michael Carrick will do nothing to deter the man.

There is only one right answer here, one ultimate destination these bumpy, littered roads are leading to: Jason Wilcox as Manchester United manager. Probably with Sir Jim Ratcliffe as his assistant.

He helped bring about the demise of Amorim with his self-confessed problem of always wanting to “interfere in what the managers are doing” for he is “a coach at heart”.

So Wilcox might as well have a go and get it out of his system before stepping down but obviously facing zero consequences as director of football.

Michael Carrick returned the strongest test results for Manchester United DNA of all the caretaker candidates considered, but he cannot be installed in the post at Old Trafford beyond his seasonal remit .

That will open the door for one of Wallsend Boys’ Club’s most famous sons to enhance his reputation, stabilise a coaching career which had stalled at Middlesbrough and ultimately realise his destiny of finally representing his boyhood club.

Carrick “dreamt one day” he would play for Newcastle but “it just wasn’t meant to be”. He will settle for dragging Jonathan Woodgate back to St James’ Park when Eddie Howe finally releases Jason Tindall back into the wild.

It is genuinely surprising that Mr. Marinakis has not already realised he is better off just cutting out the middle man and managing Forest from his City Ground VIP seat.

Mikel Arteta recently said “one day he’s going to be a great coach if he wants it,” while Regis Le Bris noted that “the way he manages the team is really impressive” and “not usual for a player”.

Granit Xhaka started his slow burn transition into coaching under Arteta at the Emirates and has continued working towards earning the relative badges at Sunderland , who he joined with that post-retirement career in mind.

“I feel that this experience here will be of the greatest benefit to me for my future,” he said in August, denying that doomed Erik ten Hag was the driving force behind Xhaka’s departure from Bayer Leverkusen.

“Why?” Xhaka added. “I want to pursue a career as a coach at some point. That’s why it’s important to experience moments of suffering and solidarity. We will have to suffer a lot in the coming months. That’s another side of football, but it’s also part of it and will shape me.”

There are worse stables to learn management from than Arteta, Alonso and Unai Emery, with plenty of Le Bris and Arsene Wenger sprinkled in too.

It might be time to update the evergreen Tottenham managerial shortlist , which Maresca might well shoot to the top of upon his Stamford Bridge demise.

If Daniel Levy were still calling the shots, Thomas Frank would have been ousted for the far less follically blessed Italian long ago. And Maresca himself would probably have been sacked by now too.

Having been “close or whatever” by his own admission to being appointed before the current manager, it does not feel as though Slaven Bilic will have strayed too far from the West Ham radar during Nuno Espirito Santo’s four-month reign.

Undeterred by losing out in that particular race , Bilic remains steadfastly unemployed and could even offer Championship experience.

That Championship experience constitutes a run of ten wins in 25 games with Watford a few years ago but West Ham will be begging by that point and cannot afford to be choosers.

And that frees up Nuno to venture back to Wolves in the most inevitable and damned of all reunions, both parties having changed inextricably since they were last together.

That would, of course, set up the Championship promotion race to end them all, ultimately won by Keegan and Meat Management FC.