Michael Carrick chose not to lash out publicly after Manchester United began the new Premier League season with a defeat to Hull City, even though the performance clearly left a mark. The early damage was done at MKM Stadium in East Yorkshire, where Hull scored once from a corner and again from a free kick to put United on the back foot in the first half.<\/p>\n
There was a better response after the interval, helped by Marcus Rashford making his first competitive United appearance in more than 600 days. Even so, the result carried a historical edge that made it especially unwelcome: this was the first time United have ever been beaten by newly promoted opposition in a season opener, and not just in the Premier League era.<\/p>\n
Carrick, though, was determined not to turn one poor afternoon into a wider crisis. He pointed to the strong preseason and the encouraging second half of 2025-26, insisting that the bigger picture still matters. \u201cI\u2019m talking to you quite calmly, but I\u2019m not exactly calm inside and enjoying the day, so there\u2019s a big difference,\u201d Carrick told reporters before heading back west across England to Manchester.<\/p>\n
He made clear there is no appetite for drastic reaction. \u201cI played here for a long time. You don\u2019t get to play here for a long time without just going day by day, the results, the ups and downs, but you just carry on as normal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Carrick added: \u201cIt\u2019s 100% not that, and trust me, it\u2019s not that. It just doesn\u2019t mean that we all have to shout and scream and come out and create some chaos just because of it. Inside we\u2019re hurting and we need to get better. But the calmness doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no emotion in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got beat, we\u2019re hurt and it\u2019s not a nice feeling. It doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s going to change the whole direction of how we\u2019re going as a team or as a football club. It\u2019s one game and results can happen in football, we all understand that. It\u2019s not nice when they do, but it does happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a separate postgame interview with TNT Sports, Fernandes said the same mistakes from \u201cevery away game\u201d last season played a part. \u201cWe [gave] too much of the ball to them. In the first 20 minutes the [Hull] goalkeeper had more touches on the ball, too much time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to press a little bit more, be more aggressive, and set plays\u2014we need to work on it, to be more aggressive and try not to concede these types of goals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick stayed measured after United\u2019s opening-day loss, but Hull exposed familiar faults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[1836,1981,180],"class_list":["post-18692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-gameweek-1","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}