If Michael Carrick is asked if he wants to be the next permanent Manchester United manager on Monday one of the worst answers he could give is the one he gave this correspondent in September 2018.
"Do you know, I can't answer that," Carrick straight-batted. "Only because I'm, what, three or four months into the start of my coaching. I'd love to be a manager one day, whether that's however long, could be whatever, I'm not blasé enough to say, 'I am going to be a manager'.
"I've got to start and earn the right to do that and, as I said, however long that takes, it might never happen, I don't know. It's like being a player; you set up to be a footballer as a young kid, does it happen, does it not?
"It's the same thing now. But obviously I'm giving everything I can and, at this moment in time, it's something I'd love to do."
The worst answer Carrick could give is 'yes'. He is fortunate to still be at the club. So are his other colleagues in the coaching department.
Carrick has been tarred with two brushes of failure. Added to Jose Mourinho's first-team staff after retiring, he was powerless to improve a fraught atmosphere. In almost three years under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, he has trained the worst-coached United team in a lifetime.
Someone has to take training and a mass exodus was never likely when Solskjaer was summoned to Carrington for the last time on Sunday morning. Assistant manager Mike Phelan is not even on the grass and his attempt to advise Marcus Rashford at Watford was like a parent attempting to order a child to do their homework.
Heads had to roll. Instead, only Solskjaer was summoned to the guillotine. United have a critical game at Villarreal on Tuesday and it was at Watford that David de Gea remarked United 'don’t know what to do with the ball. We don’t know how to defend properly'. Mourinho never threw that many under the bus.
Neither Solskjaer nor Kieran McKenna's instructions carried across the pitch to Jadon Sancho on Saturday. Darren Fletcher, the most tenuous technical director in football, was in the dugout when he had watched previous matches from the directors' box and press box. Industry sources are confused by his role and questioned the purpose of football director John Murtough.
United sources insist the presence of Fletcher and Murtough will aid the transition as United attempt to identify a credible caretaker and then a permanent manager.
Carrick is not as present in the technical area as others and this season he has been communicating with the analysts in the press box. He has the required coaching badge, though, which he didn't when Mourinho ended his residency at The Lowry three years ago.
An elegant and garlanded midfielder during his 12 years in the United squad, Carrick should be uniquely placed to identify a potential solution to United's midfield imbalance. Yet Solskjaer again erred with his selections at Watford. Scott McTominay was not fully fit, conceded a penalty, booked and then hooked at half-time.
Donny van de Beek is an open goal for Carrick. Van de Beek's performance in the second-half at Watford was his best in a United shirt and even that sole positive reflected negatively on Solskjaer, never sold on the Dutchman.
The regular selections of Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Harry Maguire have been contentious and it will be an indication of Carrick's intentions if he retains both at Villarreal. Maguire, a walking disaster all season, is suspended at Chelsea but Raphael Varane could still be sidelined.
United supporters will doubtless serenade Carrick with his chant to the tune of 'Magic' by Pilot. "It's hard to believe it's not Scholes," the song goes. Scholes has had his own short stint coaching United when Carrick and Fletcher were in Ryan Giggs's midfield for defeat to relegation fodder Sunderland.
Giggs was not permanent manager material, either.
