Carrick: I told you Old Trafford was magical!

Manchester United beat local rivals Manchester City 2-0 in the derby yesterday afternoon at Old Trafford, with Michael Carrick getting the better of Pep Guardiola and his team.

Following the sacking of Ruben Amorim, United fans were grateful to see the team revert to their strengths, playing quick, attacking football that should have seen the blues leaving with a truly embarrassing scoreline. They can be grateful it only finished 2-0, following three disallowed goals and United hitting the woodwork twice.

Speaking to the press after the game, Carrick reflected on the last week in charge of United and his thoughts on the derby day win.

I’ve had some crazy weeks in my time but, to be honest, it wasn’t actually a crazy week. It felt controlled and a bit normal, to be honest. From the outside, it always looks very different to what it’s like and everyone at the club has been so good. My coaching staff, backroom staff, the players have been great. It hasn’t been the whirlwind it probably seems. We’ve had a compressed time to get the players ready for today. They’ve been unbelievable, this week, to cope with the information and the new people people, emotionally, to put it together in the way they did.

I don’t want to get carried away with all of the DNA kind of thing. We wanted to play well today. We wanted to put things into the game that would help us to do that, we wanted to be good defensively as a whole team. We felt that we had a threat when he had the ball and in transitions, at times, but, when we did have the ball, I felt we did look dangerous. It’s an easy thing to say but I couldn’t ask for any more from the boys. They gave everything. We only had three days to prepare and they took everything on board, tactically, and to be able to deal with it emotionally was exactly as we hoped for.

I said yesterday it was a magical place and, certainly today, we all felt that. The players certainly had the emotion leaving the dressing room and to finish it like we did, it would have been lovely to finish on a high with the goal [the disallowed one by Mason Mount] but the clean sheet was vital. The energy in the stadium, for everyone to feel it, it means a lot and we are going to use that fuel to excite us and drive us on to the next one.

The post Carrick: I told you Old Trafford was magical! first appeared on Republik Of Mancunia: A Manchester United Blog.