Michael Carrick believes Manchester United’s attacking output has been good enough to avoid being overly critical of his players, despite their failure to score in the latest defeat.
Manchester United drew a blank in the 1-0 loss, ending a run of scoring in every home game they had won.
“To be fair, in terms of creation and scoring goals, that’s something I think in all the games we’ve won here we’ve scored at least two goals. We’ve lost one game [1-2 v Leeds last season] and we scored in that game, so it’s the first time [today we haven’t scored],” Michael Carrick said after the game.
Michael Carrick isn’t suggesting everything was perfect against Manchester City, but he doesn’t want one poor attacking evening to erase what Manchester United have produced in their previous matches at Old Trafford.
The bigger issue is making sure this remains an isolated problem rather than the start of a pattern.
Michael Carrick refuses to blame his forwards
Michael Carrick was also keen to defend the quality within his attacking group, highlighting the number of players capable of creating and finishing chances.
“I think there’s certainly a bit of context in that as well, and for 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 have scored and created goals a lot.”
Still, Carrick acknowledged that United expected more from themselves against City and wanted to find a way to score.
“So, I think when we look at it as an isolated game, 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.”
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Should Carrick be worried after Manchester City defeat?
Should Carrick be worried after Manchester City defeat?