By the morning of 17 September Michael Carrick had a price on his job. Sky Bet put his exit from Manchester United at 10/3, which leaves him third in the Premier League sack race, behind Frank Lampard and Álvaro Arbeloa on 3/1 apiece. Before the cup night at Old Trafford the best price available on him was as big as 9/1, at least where Oddschecker had it.

Four points and 13th place

Nothing about United’s start to the season has held together. On 22 August they lost 0-2 away at promoted Hull, which reads worse than it sounds, with Semi Ajayi and Nobel Mendy doing the damage, and then on 30 August at home to Ipswich the exact opposite happened: 5-2, a Bruno Fernandes hat-trick, Jacob Greaves turning one into his own net and a goal for Bryan Mbeumo. Then the wobble came back. Everton rescued a point on Merseyside on 6 September, and it came about as late as goals come, Ainsley Maitland-Niles making it 2-2 in the 96th minute.

The Manchester derby on 13 September was the strange one. Carrick’s side had a man advantage for more than an hour after Phil Foden went off on 23 minutes for a kick at Fernandes, and City still finished with ten men and all three points through Erling Haaland. Four points from four games, seven scored and seven conceded, 13th in the table. Hardly a crisis yet.

Two goals in ten minutes

Old Trafford took in 73,670 for the Carabao Cup third round on 16 September, with Sky Sports and ITV1 carrying it, and inside ten minutes the home side led 2-0 through Shea Lacey and Mason Mount.

Their next shot on target arrived in the 76th.

Brighton, to be fair, had made six changes from the side that won 5-0 at Coventry, and they pulled one back through Charalampos Kostoulas in first-half stoppage time before Pascal Gross on 65 minutes and Maxim De Cuyper on 69 turned the tie around altogether. Possession 58-42, shots 18-12, on target 5-4, final score 2-3. On that evidence the visitors deserved it.

Before that night the record looked almost comically safe. In 145 previous home games with a 2-0 lead United had not lost once, winning 143 of them. A run that long describes the past, it does not insure the next result. Base-game online slots run on the same rule, where a hundred winning spins do nothing to the odds on the hundred and first, while roulette and live dealer tables count every round from scratch. Spinchester Casino tops up its catalogue of those games at https://spinchesterslots.com/, where the outcome of each new spin owes nothing to the one before it. Game 146 of that run finished 2-3. By the 69th minute the number 145 had stopped meaning anything.

United are out of the League Cup at the first hurdle they faced. Second season running. Next up for Brighton is Manchester City in the fourth round, City having seen off Norwich 5-0 the same evening.

Who the market fancies

The market for United’s next permanent manager read like this on 17 September, for whatever a single day is worth: Eddie Howe 15/8, Thomas Tuchel 7/2, Julian Nagelsmann 5/1. Prices on markets like these move with the money, the news and whatever somebody says in a press conference, not only with results.

What stands out is the turn rather than the number. Carrick signed a contract to 2028 on 22 May, after taking the club into the Champions League, and by the middle of September the same manager was third favourite for the sack.

10/3 is no sentence, mind you. Two men sit ahead of him at Sky Bet, and the market is not making him the frontrunner.

Craven Cottage, then three weeks off

Fulham away comes on 20 September, a fixture moved from the 19th for television, and after that the three-week international break, with the next Premier League game at home to Tottenham on 10 October.

Win in London and the question probably parks itself for the whole break. Lose, and the break gets long. Anything else leaves Carrick sitting on bookmakers’ lists for three weeks with no way of putting it right on the pitch.