Michael Carrick hits back after being questioned on his future at Man Utd

Michael Carrick hits back after being questioned on his future as the head coach at Man Utd, after an underwhelming start to the season.

It comes days after his side received loud booed off after bottling a 2-0 lead and lose 3-2 to Brighton in the Third Round of the Carabao Cup.

Shea Lacey and Mason Mount had United 2-0 up after just 10 minutes, but the hosts suffered a humiliating collapse, with Brighton’s Charalampos Kostoulas getting one back on the verge of half time.

Then the comeback was complete thanks to goals from Pascal Gross (65′) and Maxime De Cuyper (70′), the Seagulls held on to book their place in the Fourth Round draw.

As the team made their way back down the tunnel, there were chants of “what the f***ing hell was that?!”…

Man Utd booed off after bottling 2-0 lead and lose 3-2 to Brighton in Carabao Cup

His press conference began with a journalist asking what Carrick had learned learned about his group, the squad, across the week, with the results you’ve had, and what he wanted to see differently from them in the game at Fulham at the weekend, as per manutd.com.

Carrick responded: “We’re always learning. As a group, individually, as a collective, I think we’re always learning.

“At some point in time, when you’re trying to build towards something, it’s not always going perfect and it’s not always going to plan.

“Well, I know history tells you, any team that has been successful goes through periods where you’ve got work from it, got to come through it, you’ve got to improve.

“We’ve had a small period now, over this recent time, it hasn’t been exactly what we wanted it to be. I was expecting the point at some stage, where we’d go through it. It was going to come.

“We had such a good spell last season, and going into this season, whether it was going to be now or at some point during the season, there was going to be a time where you don’t get everything out of it what you wanted.

“It’s how you work through it, how you react, staying focused, keep doing the right things and staying as level as best as you can.

“And you come through, you keep believing you’ll come through. We fully believe that.

“It’s one of those spells and it’s a week or two really, where results haven’t gone our way and tiny margins in a couple of those games as well.

“That 95th-minute goal [against Everton], the goal that shouldn’t have been [against Man City]. All of a sudden, not for me but you can feel it’s a lot bigger than it actually is. We’ll work through it. Winning games is always the answer, it’s the answer to a lot of things. It can cover up a lot of things sometimes as well, by winning games, people don’t see the whole picture, so it works both ways.”

🚨 CARRICK HITS BACK

🔺 Job uncertainty ‘ridiculous’
🔺 Utd ‘100%’ still the club for him
🔺 Bad run not a ‘catastrophe or disaster’
🔺 Takes the blame for defeats
🔺 Expected a blip at some stagehttps://t.co/X4DVuRUWsi via @MailSport #mufc

— Chris Wheeler (@ChrisWheelerDM) September 18, 2026

Q: “Are you confident you know how to get past this then?”

MC: “Yeah.”

Q: “On Wednesday, you said after the game that the pressure doesn’t bother you, but what about your staff, what about your players, your friends, your family? You know what this club is and you’re right, it’s a small period of time. But sometimes it only takes one defeat or one bad result and this kind of huge noise starts and you might be able to protect yourself. But what about everybody else?”

MC: “I think that’s my role as well, obviously, [it] is taking care of myself and looking after myself, but there’s a lot of other people that I can help influence as well. Of course there is. It’s the beauty of being here at this football club. There are great times, there are things you can achieve and there are great feelings and there are obviously the disappointments and, sometimes, the smaller disappointments lead to being a little bit bigger. It’s just part of coping and being at this great football club.”

Q: “Does it always feel like a great football club?”

MC: “Yeah. One hundred per cent it does, yeah. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, genuinely. It’s the best place for me to be. So, part of the times when it’s maybe not going to plan are sometimes the best times to work your way through, find out a few things and come out an awful lot stronger. So, it’s a period of time where, as I said, it can be small things that become big things from a lot of other people. The key to it for us is staying focused and staying on track and understanding that it can happen, as much as we don’t like it and we don’t want to accept it, it can happen. As I said, the fact it’s happened in the first cluster of the season, if it happened in November after a good few wins, it’s maybe seen a little bit different, but I was expecting at some point we were going to have a spell where we’d have to work our way through and we’re kind of in that little bit now, and we’ll find our way through it.”

Q: “You’ve been part of coaching staff, and even as a player, where things can spiral very quickly and some of those players have been in those seasons as well, so how do you kind of stop that feeling? You talked after Wednesday night of a feeling around the team, how do you stop that feeling?”

MC:  “No, it wasn’t the feeling around the team, that wasn’t a feeling around the team, it was the feeling around everywhere else. It wasn’t about, to be clear, it wasn’t the feeling about us or me or the staff or the players, it wasn’t that. It’s just the general feeling that we just spoke about, that it can create, but it can’t knock us or put us off track or [we can’t] take our eye off it or refocus or think about things that we don’t control. It’s about trusting what we do, what we’re good at, and keep doing them things to give us chances of winning games. I think, like I just said, it’s fine margins and then everything escalates from then and we live in a world of instant reaction, instant judgment. Which is fine, it’s how it is, but it’s not in my world. As I said, it’s being realistic and then understanding this was going to come and being ready for it and knowing, learning about each other, I think it’s really important and building on it for what’s to come.”

Q: “Michael, you speak about sort of not feeling the pressure, but when you’re walking off with the players on Wednesday night and the Stretford End is chanting what it’s chanting, that must hurt on a personal level?”

MC: “We don’t like losing football matches, so it’s not that I don’t feel the emotion of losing football matches, but it doesn’t affect how I think about what we need to do next. I think that’s the most important thing.”

Q: “You don’t feel you need to show more emotion?”

MC: “I need to show more emotion? In what way?”

Q: “Some fans maybe want to see that.”

MC: “In what way?”

Q: “I don’t know? Sometimes they want to see more emotion…”

MC: “What do you want me to show?”

Q: “Michael, you spoke about belief earlier. In a practical sense, how do you kind of go about trying to maintain that belief? Like you and your staff, do you kind of have meetings with the players or do you kind of show them sort of videos of happier times?”

MC: “I think you’ve got to put things in a little bit [of context]… it’s not a catastrophe or a disaster. It’s not the end of the world. We’re not in a place where we’ve gone on an awful long run of horrific results. You know, we’ve lost a couple of games recently. We feel that we’ve started and we’ve been in all the games that we’ve played, if not been a better team at the start of games. So, it’s not like we’re having a real struggle all the time. We’ve done a lot of good things in them to put ourselves in really good positions in the games that we’ve been in. So, the belief certainly comes from that, of the good things that we’ve done, that gets totally lost in some ways in the surrounding feeling, but it doesn’t get lost by us.”

Q: “Hi Michael, just about team news for the weekend. Are you expecting Luke back and is there a chance that Carlos could make his debut?”

MC: “There’s a kind of a chance on both of them, really. Not totally 100 per cent yet, but there’s half a chance, yeah.”

Q: “What’s the situation with Luke? Has it been kind of as long as you expected, because it felt very short term at first?”

MC: “Yeah, it is really short term to be honest, but it’s just working towards the game, so we’ll see how he is come the weekend.”

Q: “Michael, you said obviously we live in a world of instant reaction and judgment, which is absolutely right, but football owners inhabit that world as well now, and we see managers routinely moved on in. Just in the recent experience of this club’s history, obviously the new ownership took over the day-to-day running and Erik ten Hag lasted 20 months from that point. Ruben Amorim lasted 14 months. Not a long time at all, the results ultimately dictate things. So, is the reality that you do face a short-term pressure for results amid your longer-term wishes?”

MC: “Yeah, but I think there’ll be a lot longer than one or two games of results. I understand… first of all, taking away all that, that’s irrelevant for me, it’s about… I know the club, I know the role, I know what’s expected here in terms of playing at a certain standard, playing at a certain level, achieving certain things on the pitch. So, I get all that. In terms of future and ownership and how long I’ve got in the job, that’s just totally not in my thinking, not one part of it. Like, how long I’ve got. It’s ridiculous to think that way in a position that I’m in, that’s just not on the radar. 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… there’s not [much] more important for me than what they expect and what they want to see. I get all that. It’s two or three games that we haven’t 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. In some minds, it does. It can’t for us because we’ve got to perform, we’ve got to get wins and we’ve got a lot of games to plan for. That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Q: “You’ve been really consistent in that whenever there’s been a bad result, you’ve always taken responsibility on yourself. You’ve never pointed the fingers at players, you’ve never made public excuses or anything like that. Because you’re doing that, do you think that maybe invites more criticism onto your own shoulders?”

MC: “That’s why I’m here. It’s my responsibility. I’m fine with that. It’s not a blame game. We always search for things to look at and point at and somebody or, for whatever reason it may be, and find the blame. Sometimes, it gets almost like too much of a thing if you want to find someone to blame or something to blame. Blame me, no problem, I’ll take the responsibility, whatever it is, but it’s not about blaming people. For us, it’s about finding the solutions and being better and that’s as a whole football club, as a group of players, as staff, as owners, supporters, it’s a whole collective thing. You can put it in different directions. You can worry about different things. It’s about what you focus on, really. I’m totally happy taking responsibility. Absolutely no problem with that. It doesn’t bother me. I just know where we want to get to and we want to get there fast.”

Q: “You said on Wednesday that supporters should take a delicate approach with JJ Gabriel. I was just wondering, has there been any progress or update towards resolving his future and how confident are you that the club can get it resolved?”

MC: “I think I just repeat what I said the other day really. I think he’s a young boy, JJ, and I think it’s important that we certainly don’t play anything out here. I think the exposure and the scrutiny and everything, you’ve got to be careful and be sensible and think of him as much as anything. So, the situation will work itself out, whatever way it’s going to work itself out. Making sure he’s okay is the important thing.”