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Michael Carrick spoke for six minutes at the start of Friday’s press conference, outlining the need for Manchester United to regain certain values he says are the club’s foundation.
Carrick’s side head into Sunday’s game against Bournemouth mired in their worst league start for 40 years and on the back of a woeful 4-0 drubbing at Como on Wednesday night.
The former United midfielder gave a passionate speech in front of the assembled media, and before any questions were asked, demanding a change of approach from everyone at the club.
He said: “I’ll start today. I just want to say a few things, really.
“Recently, we haven’t had a good time. I think that’s pretty obvious. So I totally accept what we’re going through at the moment.
“We had five months of relative success in a spell where I was happy with a lot of things I was seeing and that we were doing as a team.
“We haven’t done well enough lately. We’ve had a spell that we’re really not happy with.
“Wednesday was a bad night. It was a bad night for a lot of reasons. It hurt a lot.
“It obviously hurt me to see us play that way, to see how the game panned out. As I said after the game, it was really unacceptable.
“The supporters are a huge part of this football club. They have to make the effort and the time and money they spend, to feel how we all felt on Wednesday was a tough moment.”
Carrick cited the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Matt Busby, Sir Bobby Charlton, Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney in demonstrating the kind of player that has made United one of the biggest clubs the world. And he says they now have to tap into those values.
“The foundations of this football club and values have been etched down for many years,” he added.
“I totally understand and I get every single one of them. It comes down to being humble, to hard work and being really proud to live up to those values.
“There is a resilience about this football club that has been shown for a long, long time. Whether that’s bouncing back from adversity, comebacks, late goals, sustaining success, there is a resilience to this football club that runs very, very deep.”