Manchester United were on the wrong end of a controversial decision against Manchester City, but they didn’t play well either.
Michael Carrick refused to criticize his players after United lost the derby to Manchester City
Michael Carrick refused to criticize his Manchester United players despite watching them struggle against a 10-man Manchester City side on derby day at Old Trafford.
United had a numerical advantage for around 70 minutes but did not create a clear chance until the final minute of stoppage time, with 10 of 16 shots coming from outside the penalty area.
It is the first time United have failed to score at Old Trafford under Carrick, but they rarely looked like scoring in a defeat that extends their poor start to the Premier League season.
Carrick left it until the 67th minute to introduce Benjamin Sesco despite his side struggling to get ahead, but despite the lack of creativity he felt he couldn’t blame his players for going down.
“I think it’s just part of the creation,” Carrick said when asked about long-range shots. “As I said, I can’t be too critical of the players and I won’t be because I think we’ve done a lot of good things, especially in that area. So today we didn’t quite find what we needed.
“In terms of creating and scoring goals, I think in all the games we have won here, we have scored at least two goals, lost one game and scored in this game.
“So this is the first time, so I think there’s some context to it too. Whatever the reason, at some point you have a game where we don’t score, so I can’t be too critical of the players because I think we have some really good creative players who have scored a lot and created goals.”
“I think if we look at it as an isolated game, then yes, of course, we would have hoped for more from the team as a whole and we certainly wanted to score a goal, but we didn’t do that today.”
Carrick rejected the idea that his side had failed to take the lead after Foden was sent off for a tackle on Bruno Fernandes.
“I thought so. I thought we had a fair amount of initiative, especially in the second half,” he said. “Coming out in the second half before they scored, I thought we were better.
“I thought we could improve in the second half of the first half. I thought we would come out at half-time, pick up the pace and hit the post and the game went the way we wanted at that point.”
“Then the goal obviously had a big impact and then we could have finished the game better. We could use a little more creativity. We could have finished the game better, that’s for sure.”