Michael Carrick's job prospects, LinkedIn Liam Rosenior & Bruno Fernandes' Player of the Year bid - Winners and losers from Man Utd's massive win at Chelsea

There's a school of thought that the player of the season should always come from the title winners. It's absolutely nonsense, though. While football is a team sport, we're talking about an individual award, and the best player in the league doesn't always play on the best team in the league.

This year is a perfect case in point. Declan Rice has been very good for an Arsenal side that might well go on to finish first, while nobody has been directly involved in more goals than Erling Haaland, who might also yet get his hands on another Premier League trophy with Manchester City.

Bruno Fernandes, though, simply has to win Player of the Season. He might not be a particularly likeable character but no other footballer in the league is as important to his team as the Portuguese.

He proved that again at Stamford Bridge by creating the game's only goal for Matheus Cunha with a brilliant bit of play down the right wing to take his tally of assists for the current campaign to 18 - two off the all-time Premier League record.

We're watching history in the making here - it deserves to be recognised.

The game's winning goal was particularly satisfying for the visiting fans because Bruno had breezed by a half-hearted challenge from Alejandro Garnacho in the build-up. The Argentine may have come through the youth-team ranks at Old Trafford, after joining as a youngster from Atletico Madrid, but United fans don't have any fondness for their former winger at all.

Indeed, the away end took aim at the "tw*t from Argentina" even before his 15th-minute introduction for the injured Estevao, which would have only made Garnacho even more determined to prove a point against his old club.

However, Garnacho did nothing other than prove that United were right to get rid of him last summer during yet another painfully ineffective display from the 21-year-old, who couldn't even get any change out of the average Diogo Dalot.

Some United supporters feared that the club had actually sold Garnacho on the cheap but, eight months on, £40 million ($55m) still looks like excellent money for a player who's not even half as good as he believes himself to be - something that Chelsea are now discovering to their considerable cost.

The results of an interim boss can be misleading. Manchester United know that better than most. It's easy to get seduced by a former fan favourite during a honeymoon period.

However, while there are legitimate doubts over whether Michael Carrick is really the right man for arguably the toughest role in football, what we can say is that his job interview couldn't be going much better.

He's picked up more points than any other Premier League manager since taking over on January 13. As a result, United are now within touching distance of qualifying for the Champions League - something which looked like a pipe dream for a team toiling under Ruben Amorim during the first half of the season.

Carrick, though, has instilled clarity, cohesion and character in the squad. The ex-England international suffered his first serious setback on Monday night, with United losing at home to Leeds United, but the response at Stamford Bridge was absolutely outstanding.

Carrick knew he'd have to travel to London without suspended duo Lisandro Martinez and Harry Maguire, as well as long-term absentee Matthijs de Ligt, but then he also had to leave Lenny Yoro at home due to injury.

Despite having the heart ripped out of his defence, Carrick managed to pick up a vital win - and a first clean sheet for five games - with 19-year-old Ayden Heaven playing alongside full-back Noussair Mazraoui.

"There was a lot of work that had to go into the last day or so in terms of prepping the team with a new back four," Carrick told TNT Sports afterwards. "I thought Ayden Heaven and Noussair Mazraoui coming in were incredible, Ayden being such a young age and Noussair not really playing centre-back in a back four. I have to give the coaching staff a lot of credit for getting the boys ready for that."

Carrick deserves his fair share of the credit, too, because even accounting for the new-manager bounce, taking over a team midway through a season is never easy...

Liam Rosenior is essentially the anti-Carrick. He took over a massive Premier League club back in January, too, but, unlike his compatriot, he's managed to make a team that wasn't actually in that bad shape much, much worse - as underlined by an abysmal run of one victory in eight Premier League games.

People will obviously point to the fact that Chelsea have bigger problems than the coach - which is why more than 500 hundred supporters partook in a protest against the club's owners before Saturday night's game.

However, one of the reasons why the fans have lost faith in Todd Boehly & Co. is the very fact that they saw fit to sack Enzo Maresca six months after winning two trophies and replace him with an inexperienced manager with zero titles to his name.

Rosenior was the cheap in-house appointment, the company man willing to focus solely on first-team affairs. However, it's clear that he's been overpromoted.

The players haven't turned on him by any means but the mere fact that so many key figures in the dressing room have publicly lamented the dismissal of Maresca is telling.

With all his buzz words and LinkedIn language, Rosenior talks a great game but this is a results-based business and the bottom line is that he'll be out of a job if Chelsea fail to qualify for next season's Champions League.

It wasn't just United's Champions League chances that were increased by Saturday's 1-0 victory at Stamford Bridge. Cunha's 43rd-minute winner would have been greeted with glee by supporters of both Aston Villa and Liverpool (even if they might not admit it!).

At the time of writing, Villa are fourth in the Premier League and can draw level on points with United again by beating Sunderland at home on Sunday afternoon. Of course, that's by no means a given, as the Black Cats are awkward opposition - particularly for a team that was playing Europa League football three days previously. In that sense, Chelsea losing eases some of the pressure on Villa, who are seven points above the Blues.

The Blues being beaten by United was an even bigger boost for Liverpool, though. The Reds are in rotten form, and on a real low after seeing Hugo Ekitike ruled out for the remainder of 2026 with an Achilles injury suffered in the midweek Champions League loss to Paris Saint-Germain.

Worse still, they must now make the short but daunting trip across Liverpool to face city rivals eyeing Europe themselves right now.

Sunday's Merseyside derby is a massive match for Arne Slot's side, for a variety of reasons, but it also now offers the soon-to-be-dethroned English champions a glorious opportunity to put seven points between themselves and Chelsea in the battle for fifth place.

If Chelsea do miss out on the Champions League (and maybe even Europe altogether, given Brentford, Bournemouth, Brighton, Everton and Sunderland are all within two points of the Blues), one cannot help but wonder if certain key men might consider jumping ship.

Former No.10 Joe Cole freely admitted in his post-match analysis on TNT Sports that there wasn't a doubt in his mind that some players would be straight onto their agents asking them to "get me out of here".

On the plus side, Cole Palmer insisted in an interview published before the United game that contrary to talk of a return to Manchester, he had no intention of leaving London, insisting that Chelsea weren't "too far off" challenging for the game's major honours on a regular basis.

However, 48 points from 33 Premier League games, and an 8-2 aggregate drubbing by Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, would strongly suggest otherwise.

Palmer says that it's merely a question of Chelsea "getting the right players in" this summer - but that's going to be easier said than done if they finish outside the top five.

Furthermore, in such a nightmare scenario, Chelsea's bigger problem would be trying to hold onto the few world-class players in their possession, with Enzo Fernandez certainly not the only key figure currently considering his future.

According to recent reports, Chelsea intend to tweak their recruitment policy this summer but it's starting to look like it might be a case of too little, too late. The next time United play at Stamford Bridge, Palmer might even be lining up for the visitors rather than the hosts!