Michael Carrick Plays Down Manchester United’s Poor Start After Brighton Comeback

Manchester United football team boss Michael Carrick has accepted responsibility for his team’s poor performances at the start of the season. But at the same time, he has urged the fans to stay calm, saying a poor run of results was not the end of the world for the team.

The Red Devils currently sit at the 13th position in the Premier League and they have so far won only one of their four top-fight games. The team had earlier suffered a 1-0 derby defeat against a 10-man Manchester City and then lost 3-2 to Brighton in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday despite being 2-0 up.

The defeat against Brighton was United’s first loss at home from being 2-0 up in 50 years, and the fans did not shy away from expressing their disappointment at the team’s poor and vented out their fury at the players by booing them after the full-time whistle.

Talking ahead of their next match against Fulham who are also winless so far this season, Carrick said that he is confident in his team and that a turnaround is imminent. He said, “It is not a catastrophe or a disaster. It is not the end of the world.”

He further quipped, “We are not in a place where we have got an awful long run of horrific results. We have lost a couple of games recently, and we feel that we have started and been in all the games that we have played, if not being a better team at the start of a game. It is not like we are having a real struggle all the time. We have done a lot of good things in them. So the belief certainly comes from that. The good thing that we have done gets totally lost by, in some ways, the surrounding feeling, but it does not get lost by us.”

When asked whether he felt that he was under pressure to turn things around quickly for the team, Carrick said, “I think there will be a lot longer than one or two games of results. I understand what we need to achieve and where we need to be as a football club, for the owners, what they expect, for the supporters as much as anything. More importantly, for me, what they expect and what they want to see.

I get all that. I get two or three games that we have had certain results, and two or three games too many because I really hate losing, but that doesn’t mean that the world caves in. It can't be for us, because we have got to perform, we have got to twin and we have got a lot of games to play for.”

Carrick also urged the fans to have restraint in conversations around the 15-year-old academy product JJ Gabriel, who made headlines earlier this week after reports emerged that he wants to leave the club due to issues between his family and the club.

Although Carrick did not give any update about Gabriel’s future at the club, he said, “I think he is a young boy, JJ, and I think it is important that we certainly don’t play anything out here. I think with the exposure and the scrutiny and everything that you have got to be careful, be sensible, and think of him as much as anything. So the situation will work itself out, or whatever way it is going to work itself out. Make sure he is okay.”