Concerning Michael Carrick trend is emerging at Middlesbrough FC - It's worse than Pulis and Monk | OneFootball

The under pressure Boro boss is falling short of Pulis and Monk in one key statistic in their respective Riverside tenures.

Middlesbrough head coach Michael Carrick appears to be fighting for his job at the Riverside Stadium after a woeful performance at home to Watford saw his side drop to their fourth straight defeat in the Championship.

With just one win from their last seven league matches, Boro are falling out of the play-off race at a rate of knots, in a season where anything less than a top-six finish simply won't do.

It would also mark the second straight campaign of no play-off football for the Teessiders, having finished eighth last term with 69 points. Sitting on 44 points after 32 games played this season, just matching that points haul seems highly unlikely given Middlesbrough's wretched run of form.

As a result, Carrick is on the Riverside hotseat, with reports of a Steve Cooper succession plan beginning to gather momentum. Whether it be as a result of poor defending, self-inflicted wounds, out of form stars or a blunted cutting edge after the departure of Emmanuel Latte Lath, the reasoning for this mounting pressure on the Boro boss is clear - Middlesbrough aren't winning enough games.

But how bad is Carrick's win percentage so far this season? How does it compare with other seasons by previous Middlesbrough managers? Football League World investigates.

Having arrived on Teesside in late October 2022 following the departure of Chris Wilder, Carrick enjoyed one of the most impressive in-season turnarounds seen by a Middlesbrough manager.

Boro were 22nd in the Championship at the time of Wilder's sacking, and come the end of the 2022/23 campaign, the former Manchester United legend had guided the club to a fourth-placed finish, whilst also transforming Chuba Akpom from Riverside outcast to a Championship golden boot winner.

Since that season, however, Boro have been on a sharp decline when it comes to both their win rate, and their points per game average.

Middlesbrough were averaging just under that golden two points per game average in 2022/23, but that fell to 1.5 last season, and now after 32 games played this season, it stands at 1.4.

Boro's win percentage has fallen off a cliff too after Carrick's first season in charge, dropping from 60 percent in 2022/23 to 43 percent last term, before slumping even further to a current 38 percent this season.

For the amount of financial backing Middlesbrough chairman/owner Steve Gibson has given to Carrick in recent times, as well as the quality of players in Boro's team, the numbers currently being registered in those two key categories are simply not good enough.

Carrick's Middlesbrough win percentage doesn't make for great reading when compared with Tony Pulis' Boro record

Both at the time and in the years that have followed since his departure, Tony Pulis came in for a significant amount of criticism for his direct style of play he brought to the Riverside Stadium between December 2017-May 2019.

However, the Welshman guided Boro to a fifth-place finish in the 2017/18 season after taking over from Garry Monk at Christmas, before missing out on a play-off spot by just one point in 2018/19.

Across his two separate league campaigns as Middlesbrough manager, Pulis' teams did struggle in the goalscoring department, but his defensive records were highly impressive. Boro conceded just 45 goals in the 2017/18 season, before bettering that in 2018/19 with 41. Middlesbrough have already conceded 43 goals in 32 Championship games this season.

His football may not have been the prettiest on the eye, but it was effective. A 52 percent win percentage and a 1.8 points per game average in 2017/18 as well as a 43 percent win rate and 1.6 points per game average in 2018/19 (per FotMob) are both considerably better than what Carrick's side are averaging this season.

Carrick's win percentage is even worse than Garry Monk's Middlesbrough spell

Monk is not a fondly remembered figure on Teesside, largely due to his financial mismanagement in the transfer market following Middlesbrough's relegation from the Premier League in 2017.

He'd splurged a parachute payment-fuelled war chest on the likes of Britt Assombalonga, Martin Braithwaite, Ashley Fletcher, Jonny Howson and Darren Randolph among others, and on many of those deals, Boro simply didn't get much of a return on their hefty investments.

His summer of spending in 2017 set the club back considerably from a financial perspective, and with Middlesbrough sat in a mid-table position come Christmas that year, he was relieved of his duties at the Riverside after a matter of months in the job.

However, as turbulent and as disappointing as those few months were, the former Leeds United and Swansea City manager was still able to record a 43 percent win percentage, as well as a 1.5 points per game average - per FotMob.

Therefore, to see that Carrick's current Middlesbrough team are putting up significantly worse numbers than both Pulis and Monk did from their respective spells on Teesside will be pretty shocking to most, and will paint an obvious picture as to why his days in the Riverside dugout may well be numbered.