Michael Carrick has said he is keen to see which players in his squad are \u201creally there\u201d as Manchester United try to steady a poor start to the season.<\/p>\n
United\u2019s victory over Sabah on Sept. 10 in the opening round of Champions League fixtures has been one of only two wins they have recorded so far. With a difficult trip to the Metropolitano next on the schedule, Carrick\u2019s side could now go five matches without a win.<\/p>\n
That possibility sits in sharp contrast to the opening stage of Carrick\u2019s first spell in charge, when his early months were followed by a far more encouraging run. United never went more than two games without victory during his interim period, but they have already moved beyond that point now.<\/p>\n
Carrick used his pre-match press conference to frame the challenge in positive terms, insisting the difficult spell can reveal who is truly committed to the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this part, sometimes when it\u2019s not quite going for you, you see who\u2019s really there, you see within the group, the players, the squad, the club, who\u2019s really there and who wants to be here for the long term,\u201d Carrick told his prematch press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201c[You see who is] really attached to it and [who it] really means something [to].<\/p>\n
\u201cThe supporters are there, they\u2019re desperate for it, and we\u2019ve got to give them something. I think you\u2019ve got to embrace the challenges to get to where you want to be. We\u2019re right there now in the middle of it, but totally believe that we\u2019ll work through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
United\u2019s current position is a reminder of how quickly fortunes can turn. The club enjoyed a very different mood during the second half of the 2025\u201326 campaign, when Carrick\u2019s first six months led to questions over why he had not been appointed permanently sooner.<\/p>\n
Even so, United have been here before. It was only in January 2025 that Ruben Amorim\u2019s side went five matches without a win, a run that included defeats to Tottenham, Bournemouth, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Newcastle United before a 2\u20132 draw away at Liverpool brought it to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick says United\u2019s slump can show which players are fully committed as pressure mounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1647,179],"tags":[1162,1047,180],"class_list":["post-21742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-champions-league","category-manchester-united","tag-analytics","tag-champions-league","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21742","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=21742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}