Michael Carrick has backed the England recalls for Kobbie Mainoo and Harry Maguire as fitting recognition of their recent form, while confirming Manchester United are progressing on contract discussions for both players.<\/p>\n
Carrick noted that Mainoo has been an ever-present in United\u2019s midfield since he assumed control from the sacked Ruben Amorim. Maguire, meanwhile, has reinforced his status as a key leader in United\u2019s backline, a responsibility that has grown with Matthijs de Ligt absent since November with a back injury. England manager Thomas Tuchel named a 35-player party for the upcoming international break, one of the final tune-ups ahead of this summer\u2019s World Cup, and Carrick said the selections were deserved.<\/p>\n
\u201cContract negotiations with players are always ongoing, so you hope whatever it is gets done in the right way,\u201d Carrick said. \u201cBoth have been great, and being back in the England squad is what they deserve. I’m not getting involved on how close things are, but they’ve both done great.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club is reported to be close to new terms for both men. Mainoo is expected to receive at least a new five-year contract, a turnaround after he was cast aside by Amorim. Maguire could be offered a one-year deal with the option to extend for another 12 months, a practice United often use with older players.<\/p>\n
United\u2019s form under Carrick has improved notably since he replaced Amorim in mid-January. The side have lost only one Premier League game in that period, and the draw with Bournemouth was just the third time in 10 outings the Red Devils have failed to win. Carrick placed those results in the context of a demanding competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis league\u2019s tough to win games,\u201d Carrick said. \u201cWe\u2019ve won a lot of games recently, so I think the amount of points we\u2019ve accumulated in some of the performances and the results that we\u2019ve had I think is a big positive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick says Mainoo and Maguire have earned England recalls as United move to finalise contract deal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,172],"tags":[1006,1530,1393],"class_list":["post-9356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-epl","tag-captaincy","tag-caretaker-manager","tag-centre-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9356","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=9356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}