Michael Carrick praised Manchester United’s “fantastic” display in their 2-0 derby defeat of Manchester City and said the challenge for his remaining 16 games as interim coach was to maintain such high standards as a “version of normal”.
Carrick revelled in his first match back in charge as goals from Bryan Mbeumo and Patrick Dorgu capped an impressive performance.
Carrick has been appointed until the end of the season and is clear that with only European qualification left to play for, his team have to maintain the same level and strive for consistency.
“The boys were fantastic, in so many ways,” Carrick said. “And to manage it emotionally with the information we’ve given them and pulling it together it was pretty good. That’s the challenge ultimately – it needs to be a version of normal, certainly we’re not going to have games with the emotion and the feeling of everything that today brought.
“We all understand that, but there’s definitely a level of standards and expectation we need to live up to from ourselves as much as anyone on the outside.”
Carrick, who took over on Wednesday, next takes United to Arsenal on Sunday week. He said: “Consistency is the key to any success and if you can find that then you’re on to a winner. That’s our challenge. We’ve got to find a way of doing that. Big one next week, another tough one, but on the back of today we’ve got a good foundation to build on.”
With City winless in their opening four league games of the year – drawing the other three – Pep Guardiola was asked about their title credentials. “If you analyse the results, yeah, we are not ready,” he said. “But performances I have been satisfied with. I could sit here and say the opposite. Today was not enough, but the previous games, we were enough.
“It’s not about not running or not trying, I know how they commit [to] all of them, but sometimes at 12.30pm on Saturday one team is better than the other and you have to accept it.”
Guardiola believed Diogo Dalot should have been sent off for stamping on Jérémy Doku in the 10th minute. “It’s a red card, but it would be poor as a manager to analyse that as the reason for the game,” he said. “For 80 minutes, it would have been 10 against 11, but if we played with the energy that we did then no change. We have to look at ourselves and Man United were better.”
Asked about Marc Guéhi’s projected move from Crystal Palace, Guardiola said “apparently it’s close”, but that he had nothing from the club’s executives.
