Michael Carrick’s return as interim head coach has lifted spirits at the club ahead of Saturday’s Manchester Derby. Darren Fletcher’s two-game reign ended with Carrick back for a second interim spell. His first stint delivered wins over Villarreal and Arsenal either side of a draw at Chelsea, and he is respected for the tactical plans he produced at Middlesbrough.<\/p>\n
Carrick has experience of this fixture, having played in it 30 times, but he will prepare without a couple of options. Matthijs de Ligt has not featured since playing the entirety of United’s 2\u20131 win at Crystal Palace on November 30. The issue was initially described by Amorim as a “small thing”, though the manager later said he had to be “careful” because de Ligt was suffering bouts of pain. Carrick confirmed that the Netherlands international is still \u201ccarrying a bit of an issue\u201d and will not be available for the derby.<\/p>\n
Noussair Mazraoui will also be absent. He has started every Morocco game at the Africa Cup of Nations and helped the hosts reach Sunday\u2019s final after beating Nigeria on penalties. Morocco face Senegal in the showpiece, so Mazraoui will not be in action for United this weekend. The fullback should be available the following weekend when United visit Premier League leaders Arsenal. Mazraoui was not a natural fit for Amorim’s 3-4-2-1 but is expected to emerge as Carrick’s first-choice right back in a back four.<\/p>\n
There is also a youth note to the squad picture. Eighteen-year-old Lacey made his senior debut late in United’s 2\u20131 defeat to Aston Villa on Dec. 21 and was used from the bench in both of the games overseen by Fletcher.<\/p>\n
Carrick inherits a squad that is largely fit, but the absences of de Ligt and Mazraoui shape his selection for one of the season’s most significant fixtures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick returns with optimism; De Ligt and Mazraoui are unavailable for Saturday’s Manchester Derby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,969],"tags":[1211,1021,1087],"class_list":["post-5986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-premier-league","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-amorim","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986","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=5986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}