A new floor at Old Trafford: Bournemouth win 3-0 and Carrick is left hanging by a thread

The banner came out before half time, which tells you how bad it was. United supporters unfurled the old Standards flag, the one carrying Cantona, Keane and Robson, while their team was still only losing 2-0, and by full time thousands had already left. Bournemouth won 3-0 at Old Trafford on Sunday, their third 3-0 win at this ground in four seasons, and the scoreline, if anything, was polite about the distance between the teams.

The damage arrived in five minutes. Bournemouth had been the better side from the start, Rayan and Evanilson heading wide, before Ayden Heaven's wild lunge conceded the free kick that Justin Kluivert swung to the far post on 38 minutes, where Rayan volleyed in, unmarked. Five minutes later Leny Yoro slipped under pressure from Adrien Truffert, who squared for Marcus Tavernier to tap into an empty net. Evanilson had a goal disallowed just after the restart and then, on 71 minutes, simply outran a wandering Senne Lammens to a long Lewis Cook ball and curled the third into an unguarded net from out on the right. Marco Rose's side played like a team with a plan. United played like a team apologising.

Hovering over all of it was the empty seat on the home bench. Bruno Fernandes, the captain, criticised Michael Carrick's tactics in midweek after the 4-1 defeat at Como, and Carrick left him out entirely, calling it a football decision and handing the armband to Harry Maguire. Fernandes never got on. Whatever message the decision was meant to send, the team that received it produced this. After the match Carrick insisted he was carrying on as normal, accepted the responsibility in full, and offered no guarantee about next week, because he does not have one to offer. The away fans sang the obvious song about the morning, and Ashley Young, watching his old club, said the players looked like a squad no longer responding to its manager.

The numbers have stopped looking like a bad start and started looking like a condition. Seven points from eight league games is United's worst return at this stage since 1986-87. They sit 16th, one point above the relegation zone, without a win in eight matches in all competitions, and with two wins in 12 all season, against newly promoted Ipswich and Azerbaijani side Sabah. This is the same Carrick who took United to third last season after replacing Ruben Amorim, which is precisely why the fall is so hard to explain away as a squad problem alone.

Our call is that the Fernandes decision, not the defeat, is what ends this. Managers survive bad runs when the dressing room is visibly still theirs, and benches a captain for a whole humiliation, at home, while the team collapses in front of him, is a public break that neither man can walk back. Reports before kickoff said the board intended to judge results up to the November international break while assessing alternatives, and a board that is already assessing alternatives has, in practice, decided. Carrick may still be in the dugout next week. The authority he needed to turn this around left the building somewhere between the second goal and the banner.