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Carrick hits back at ‘lazy’ Man Utd analysispublished at 16:26 BST
Man Utd v Ipswich (16:30 BST)
Simon Stone
BBC Sport Chief Football News Reporter at Old Trafford
Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick is not a man
who lets emotions get the better of him.
Neither is he someone who will offer a soundbite in a
reactionary response to a question.
However, he has been genuinely irritated by the insinuation
his side lacked passion in their shock defeat at Hull last Saturday.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2-0 loss, he rounded on
former Middlesbrough forward Jan Aage Fjortoft, who now works for TV, who
claimed his players lacked passion, saying the assertion was ‘ridiculous’.
On Friday in his pre-match press conference, Carrick was
peppered with questions demanding his explained what went wrong and why it
could not simply be down to a lack of passion.
“I don’t have to give you the total reason, because we know
what we’re trying to improve on,” he said.
“I’m just saying I think it’s so easy and lazy to just go
‘team loses a game, so everything’s wrong; this is wrong, this is wrong, (you
are) not trying enough, (there is) not enough passion’. It’s just like the
obvious answer.
“It’s just a game, though. We’ve probably played like that
and won games, and everyone goes, ‘What a great team, what a great coach, what
a great load of players’.
“When you’re analysing it, you’ve got to dig deeper than
that and understand the details of it.”