Michael Carrick has declined to blame Manchester United's summer transfer business for the team's recent poor form, despite criticism from defender Lisandro Martinez and calls from supporters for the manager to speak out on the club's £150million expenditure.
Martinez criticised the club's hierarchy after United's Champions League defeat to Atletico Madrid earlier this month, stating he "expected more" from the club in the summer transfer window. United are currently dealing with an extensive injury crisis, with nine senior players absent from the midweek defeat at Como, and Carrick has been forced to deploy players in unfamiliar positions.
Carrick on Transfer Support
When asked whether he would acknowledge that insufficient signings during the summer have contributed to the poor results, Carrick said: "I think there's a lot of elements, different elements, some smaller than others, of why we've ended up not winning as many games. So, I'm pretty clear about that."
Questioned on whether the board had admitted he should have been afforded more support in the window, Carrick replied: "It's not about receiving more support, it's about doing what's right on the football pitch to get results, and we haven't done enough of that lately."
Addressing Running Metrics Criticism
United sit bottom of the crucial running metrics, and the players appeared sluggish in the defeat to Como. Carrick, however, cautioned against focusing solely on that statistic.
"I think you've got to be careful with just saying 'not running'," he said. "As I said we've won a lot of games over a period of time and this pressing thing, that suddenly everyone thinks about pressing. Pressing is one small part of football. There's all sorts of different ways of what people are classed as a press. What actually is it? What you're doing it for? Is it to your strength? Is it covering up other spaces? It's just thrown about as a bit of a word at the minute of pressing. You don't necessarily need to press to win games of football."
"Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It's just a thing that gets thrown about. So we've got to be a bit careful with that. As I say, it's not necessarily just running stats that define football games either," he added.
Looking Ahead
Carrick concluded: "So we've just got to get back to doing a lot of the things that we were doing last season and for certain parts of this season and certain games we've been okay. We need to get back to being at our best."
