Every word of Michael Carrick’s Fulham pre-match press conference

Manchester United interim manager Michael Carrick has been speaking to the media in the pre-match press conference ahead of Sunday’s Premier League clash with Fulham at Old Trafford.

The presser is ongoing, please refresh regularly for the latest updates.

Injury update

Carrick was first asked about the status of the injured stars.

“Yeah, Josh [Zirkzee] is back training this week, which is good news,” Carrick replied. “Obviously, first time, so he’s been out for a short amount of time, but first training with us since we’ve been here, so that’s great to have Josh back. Pat, [Dorgu], unfortunately, he’s going to be out for a period of time. We’re still working through how long that’s going to be. So we’ll have to see.”

“Disappointment, he’s had such a big couple of weeks, Pat. So we weren’t sure whether it was a little bit of a cramp or was it something a little bit more serious. At the moment, it looks a little bit more on the serious note. So it’ll be a few weeks for that, how many weeks we’ll have to wait and see. So that’s disappointing for all of us, really, and for Pat. He’s in such a good place, but unfortunately, it is football and it’s something we’ve got to work through and get him back as soon as we can.”

Asked about Matthijs de Ligt, he replied “Yeah, he’s not trained with us yet. So just working through the process, really, of getting him back as soon as we can.”

The next question was “Michael, when you look across the last year or so for United, I know you’ve not been here that entire time, but you’ve watched a lot of the team. A consistent theme has been the struggle to win games consistently at Old Trafford. Do you know why that is?”

Carrick answered: “I think ultimately, consistency is the key to success. In my eyes, it’s one of the most difficult things to achieve, to be good consistently, rather. So, yeah, it takes so much. It takes a level of performance, it takes the level of mentality and the intensity and the concentration and actually being able to cope emotionally with the ups and downs of what each game brings and moving on to the next.”

“So there’s so many things that go into it. And listen, that’s what we’re working towards. We’ve had a great couple of weeks, two big results. There’s bigger games coming up, and it’s just keeping the mind in the right place as much as the emotions to be able to go into the next game, just as we have done the previous two.”

More to follow …

The Peoples Person has been one of the world’s leading Man United news sites for over a decade. Follow us on Bluesky: @peoplesperson.bsky.social