‘I’ve not given my own position any thought,’ says Carrick after 4-1 drubbing against Como

Bruno Fernandes questioned manager Michael Carrick’s tactics after Manchester United were thrashed by Como on Wednesday.

United’s season sank to a new low as they were humbled 4-1 by the Italian side in the Champions League.

It has been a troubled start to the campaign for United, with just seven points collected from seven Premier League games, defender Lisandro Martinez openly highlighting the club’s shortcomings, and Carrick coming under pressure.

Fernandes, who was substituted after 67 minutes at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia, delivered a damning assessment after the game.

The captain told TNT Sports: “It’s a decision from the staff to not press man-to-man and sometimes leave a little bit of space in behind, and trying to get the ball in the first moment, to wait for them, to give them the ball.

“Sometimes when you give too much of the ball to these teams, they get confidence. They have so many bodies behind the ball that make you run a lot, make people get frustrated, and then obviously when you recover the ball, the legs and the brain are much more difficult to make it work.”

Asked further about the tactics, he added: “It’s on the manager and on the staff to say it, it is not on me.

“I just said that I think sometimes we have to be more brave under pressure, trying to take a risk of getting that press very high and making them uncomfortable, as they did to us.”

Fernandes felt United’s attitude was wrong from the moment they conceded the first goal after two minutes.

He said: “Obviously it’s not the first time and I think, again, we started on the wrong foot and they scored very early.

“Conceding the goal very early makes us feel, going into the game, already in a mood of a defeat, and it’s very difficult to get out of that at the moment without being ourselves and trying to push and trying to be brave, trying to have the ball, trying to make something happen.

“And if we’re not able to do that, it’s going to be very difficult to get out of this situation.”

Carrick held his hands up apologetically to the largely empty away end after the defeat.

“First of all, I have to apologise to the supporters,” he said after game.

“For us to play in that way is not acceptable. It wasn’t a good performance at all. We wanted to build on what we brought to Leeds and the performance that we had at Leeds. That bit of intensity, that spirit, that aggression, that real willingness to give everything, and tonight was the total opposite of [that] performance. It was tough to watch.”

Carrick sidestepped a question about whether he would quit during a press conference that ended with him being asked if he feared he could lose his job.

“I’ve not given my own position any thought,” he said. “It is the supporters (I am thinking about). I was one of them tonight watching that and I wasn’t happy at all.”

He added of his side’s effort: “We can all play well, we can all have poor performances, but to do it in that manner is really not right at all.

“It wasn’t just the goals, it was the manner and the way we played at times, in the way we went about it, was the difficult thing to watch for me.”