"You want to follow him. You want to fight for him. You want to die for him on the pitch."
Kobbie Mainoo's assessment of manager Michael Carrick on Sky Sports after Manchester United took a 3-2 win over Liverpool resonated.
It resonated because when Mainoo scored his 77th-minute winner at Old Trafford, the stadium announcer made a point of hailing the homegrown, local-born 21-year-old, who signed a new long-term contract on Thursday.
Mainoo has become the poster boy for the club, which is amazing considering he had a request to join Napoli on loan turned down last summer, he did not start a league game for the first five months of this season and he was preparing for tough discussions over his future before Ruben Amorim got the boot.
Bringing Mainoo back into the fold – and getting him to play at a high level – is just one of Carrick's completed tasks since being asked to guide his old club through to the end of the season.
He has also restored captain Bruno Fernandes to his favourite position and overseen wins over Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Chelsea and now Liverpool.
In addition, the 44-year-old has taken the club back into the Champions League after a two-year absence.
We do not know how he will react to playing games every three or four days, rather than once a week and sometimes not even that, although he did OK at Middlesbrough.
We do not know how he will react to a losing sequence because it hasn't happened yet. United have won 10 our of 14 matches under Carrick, with no team accumulating more points during that period.
That is the reality. That is what the hierarchy will be discarding if they choose to replace Carrick in three games' time.
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