Man Utd were on the wrong end of a controversial call against Manchester City but they didn't play well either.
Michael Carrick
Michael Carrick refused to criticise his players after United lost the derby to Manchester City
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Michael Carrick refused to be critical of his Manchester United players despite seeing them toil against a 10-man Manchester City team on derby day at Old Trafford.
United had a numerical advantage for around 70 minutes but didn't create a clear-cut chance until the final minute of injury time, with 10 of their 16 shots coming from outside the penalty area.
It's the first time United have failed to score at Old Trafford under Carrick but they rarely looked like finding the back of the net in a defeat that prolongs their poor start to the Premier League season.
Carrick left it until the 67th minute to introduce Benjamin Sesko despite seeing his team struggle to make inroads, but despite the lack of creativity, he felt he couldn't blame his players for drawing a blank.
"That's just part of the creation, I think, a little bit," Carrick said when asked about the shots from distance. "Like 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 in that area particularly. So today we didn't quite find what we needed.
"In terms of creation and scoring goals, that's something I think all the games we've won here, we've scored at least two goals, and we've lost one game and we scored in that game.
"So it's the first time, so I think there's certainly a bit of context in that as well. Whatever reason, at some point, you have a game when we haven't scored, so I can't be too critical of the players, because I think we've got some really good creative players who've scored and created goals a lot.
"I think when we look at it as an isolated game, yeah, of course, we would hope for more in general from the team, and we certainly wanted to score a goal, and we didn't today."
Carrick did reject the idea that his team didn't take the initiative once Foden had been sent off for kicking out at Bruno Fernandes.
"I thought we did, yeah. I thought we had a fair bit of the initiative, especially second half," he said. "Coming out second half before they scored, I thought we were better.
"I thought we could improve on the second half of the first half. I thought we'd come out at half-time and build momentum and hit the post, and the game was building the way we wanted it to at that point.
"Then the goal obviously had a big impact, and then we could have finished the game better. We could have been a little bit more creative. We could have finished the game better, for sure."