Man Utd boss Michael Carrick following eerily similar path as Arsenal rival Mikel Arteta as pair face off at Emirates

WHEN Arsenal and Manchester United meet this weekend, the spotlight will not only fall on two giants of English football – but also on two managers whose journeys into coaching are remarkably alike.

Mikel Arteta and Michael Carrick were once opponents in Arsenal vs United clashes between 2011 and 2016, a period when the rivalry had lost some of its fire from the 90s and 2000s.

Now, years later, the former midfield generals face off from the dugout as graduates of the Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho coaching schools.

Arteta was already transitioning into coaching while still playing under Wenger, and Le Prof saw it coming in 2015/16 – the final season of Arteta’s playing career.

In October 2015, Wenger said: “I really hope Mikel considers going into coaching. When you manage, you want to see your players continue and see them give their experience and knowledge back.

“You want them to give their expertise of the way we want to play football and the way we want to behave.

“It would be great if someone like Mikel went into management, so somewhere the spirit of our game can survive through the players who have played for us.

“He has the quality to be a manager in the future, I’m sure.”

Arteta retired in 2016 and went straight into Pep Guardiola’s backroom staff at Manchester City, spending three and a half years learning from one of the modern game’s greatest minds before taking the Arsenal job.

When he stepped into the role, Arteta spoke of Guardiola’s influence on him. He said: “The way he makes the staff feel, the players feel, and everyone around the club, is unique. I think it is his biggest power.

“And then his vision, his desire to work, his desire to transmit the messages in a unique way, and when he wanted to implement. He had a dream that he wanted to do what we were taught at Barcelona 20 years ago, he wanted to do it in the Premier League.

“He asked me to help that dream become a reality in the Premier League and everyone said it couldn’t be done, it was impossible with those players, they are small, and the physicality, but we did it. I am so proud I helped him a little bit to reach that dream.”

Carrick’s route followed the same blueprint.

At the tail end of his playing career under Mourinho, he was already moving into a coaching role, retiring in 2018 and immediately joining the first-team staff.

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Paul Pogba offered a glimpse into Carrick’s coaching influence during United’s dramatic 3-2 comeback win over City in April 2018 – a game where the French midfielder ignited the comeback by scoring two goals.

Pogba said: “I give the credit to Michael Carrick… after every game he shows me the video and says to make those runs.

“He’s someone who’s helped me a lot… every time after training he says: ‘Come, look at this run, you can kill because nobody can stop you.’”

Like Arteta, Carrick transitioned from playing in centre-midfield to coaching seamlessly, putting everything he learnt on the pitch into practice ready for management.

Arteta’s first job as a first-team manager came at Arsenal in December 2019 – three-and-a-half years after working as Guardiola’s assistant at City.

After retiring in the summer of 2018, Carrick had his own three-and-a-half-year apprenticeship – first under Mourinho, before continuing alongside Ole Gunnar Solskjaer then stepping in as United’s interim boss in late 2021.

But Mourinho was not Carrick’s only education. He spent seven years playing under Sir Alex Ferguson where he won five Premier League titles alongside fellow world class players.

Here, he absorbed elite standards, the manager’s authority and the culture of winning that defined Ferguson’s United sides.

There have been constant murmurs of “United DNA”, which Carrick eluded to upon taking the caretaker role ahead of the Manchester Derby.

He said: “I love working with the players and helping them get better individually, which, hopefully, will help the team improve and [I want to] be there to support them. I’m one of them, we’re all in it together, and I think it’s important that we all look after each other.

“But I know it comes down to results. Hopefully, we can play a really exciting type of football and be positive and express and bring excitement. I want to be off my seat. I want to be enjoying watching the boys play, and results obviously need to come with that.

Carrick’s footballing education began long before Old Trafford too – coming through the famous Wallsend Boys Club system before forging his name at West Ham, where Harry Redknapp gave him his breakthrough.

Two years of Arteta’s youth career, meanwhile, were spent in Barcelona’s La Masia academy in the late 90s – a front-row seat to mastering positional play, discipline and footballing structure at its purest.

This was a time when Guardiola was a first-team player at Barcelona, while the manager was Louis van Gaal – who Carrick played under for two years between 2014 and 2016 at United.

Ironically, Carrick’s final game of his short three-game interim spell at United in 2021 came against Arteta’s Arsenal – a 3-2 win that now feels like a footnote in a much bigger story.

Perhaps had Carrick been handed the job at that point rather than Ralf Rangnick, his story might mirror Arteta’s even more closely.

Instead, Carrick chose a different route via Middlesbrough, before now returning to Old Trafford more fully formed.

This time, however, the roles are reversed – Arteta’s Arsenal are now title favourites.

Carrick’s United are at the stage Arsenal were four years ago – full of promise, frustration and fragile belief.

In the 2021/22 season (the season during which Carrick spent time as interim at United), Arteta’s Arsenal sat fifth after 22 matches with 39 points, following a 1-0 win away to Wolves that sparked a five-game winning run.

From there, Arsenal pushed hard for the top four, winning 11 of the last 17 matches in the run-in.

Their final seven league fixtures included clashes with Chelsea, Manchester United and Spurs – fellow top-four contenders.

Arsenal beat United 3-1 but suffered costly defeats to Tottenham and Newcastle in their final weeks, missing out on the Champions League to Antonio Conte’s Spurs.

Yet that disappointment proved pivotal rather than terminal.

From August 2022 onwards, Arsenal transformed into genuine title challengers – shaped by the momentum Arteta’s side built at the end of the previous campaign, and lessons learned from that painful near-miss.

Fast forward to now, and Carrick’s Manchester United find themselves in a strikingly similar position.

After 22 games of the 2025/26 season, United are also fifth – this time on 35 points – staring down the same battle for Champions League football.

But just like Arteta four years earlier, Carrick’s real ambition is to lay the foundations of a side capable of challenging for titles over the next five years – exactly as Arteta has done.

United’s final six matches feature tests against Chelsea and Liverpool – rivals for that top-four position, as well as Sunderland, Brentford and Brighton – teams hovering close to them in the table right now.

Like Arsenal in 2021/22, Carrick’s United also have no European football to distract them – another quiet but significant similarity.

Sunday is not just a meeting of clubs, it is a meeting of timelines – one manager showing what patience and process can deliver, and the other hoping he is standing at the very start of that same road.