Every word of Michael Carrick’s Bournemouth pre-match press conference – embargoed section

Every word of Michael Carrick’s Bournemouth pre-match press conference – embargoed section Michael Carrick has been speaking to the media in the embargoed section of the pre-match press conference ahead of Sunday’s Premier clash with Bournemouth at Old Trafford.The first question was about the reasons for the bad run.Carrick replied: There’s a lot of elements—different elements, some smaller than others—of why that, um, why we’ve ended up not winning as many games. So, um, I’m pretty clear about that.Reporter: Has anyone from above conceded that perhaps you could have received more support across the summer?Carrick: No, it’s not—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.Reporter: When you came in last Friday, you talked about, you know, how good the training had been before Leeds, and then there was a positive performance at Leeds. It felt like you went to Como with a little bit more positivity, and because of that, the manner of the performance at Como was a little bit of a shock, maybe. With that in mind, do you trust the players on Sunday to deliver what you’re asking them to?Carrick: I definitely trust them, yeah, 100%. I trust them. It wasn’t a very good night at all for so many reasons. We all know that. I think that’s pretty obvious. I definitely trust them, yeah. I trust them. We’ll be a different team on Sunday. We have to be a different team on Sunday.Reporter: Hi, Michael. Just going back to Simon’s question before, and your comment to Bruno on Wednesday night. About running: Ruben Amorim came into this job, and he said he’d make the players run like mad dogs. It didn’t happen. Ralf Rangnick, we know, had to send him on a punishment run in his second or third game because of the lack of running. Ralf Rangnick came here with a name for having—he’s kind of gegenpressed and high-pressing—it lasted half a game. Why are the players here not running? It’s a basic requirement of an athlete, and it seems staggering to us and to the fans. Why over many years now the players are not simply running?Carrick: I think you’ve got to be careful with what you’re saying. Not running, you know. As I said, we’ve won a lot of games for over a period of time, so that—and this pressing thing that suddenly kind of everyone thinks about pressing, that pressing’s one small part of football.There’s all sorts of different ways of what people class as a press, what actually is it, what you’re doing it for. Is it to your strength? Is it covering up all the spaces? It’s just throwing about is 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. 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 the season and certain games we’ve been okay. We need to get back to being at our best.Reporter: It feels like part of the wider cultural issue here since Como, in your defence, people have kind of floated the idea that this team and this club at the moment is unmanageable. Do you feel it’s unmanageable?Carrick: No. No.Reporter: Hi, Michael. Just a little bit on what was so successful in that period when you were interim manager. It felt like there was a lot more urgency and adventure to the play. Do you feel like you can still play that way with this group in this current form, with the players that are out and with the signings and everything?That feels like maybe that was what Bruno was perhaps striking at the heart of.Carrick: We can play in different ways. We just haven’t played well enough, you know. I think it gets looked into all sorts of different styles and different this and that and presses and it tries to get dissected in all sorts of different ways. We can be a lot better than we have been whatever way we end up playing, whatever system, whatever the tactics. We can be a lot better than that.And we have to be.Reporter: In terms of opening this with a very disturbing monologue, I would have to say, in terms of invoking your history with the club, the thought process behind that and wanting to kind of take the initiative here, where did that come from? And how long have you been thinking about that?Carrick: Because I understand the situation, you know. I fully understand the situation, and I understand my position, and I know what this football club means to so, so many people.And I don’t—again, please don’t say that the history is one thing and that’s why it doesn’t give you the right to keep winning. Teams that win earn the right to win. So it’s important that we draw inspiration from the history and the past of what’s gone on.But our responsibility is to carry that forward and it’s so, so important to me that we do that.Reporter: Hi, Michael. You mentioned Ferguson, in your opening address. Have you sought any advice from him, or Ole for that matter, given the difficult time he went through?Carrick: I speak to both of them quite regularly, to be honest. So it’s nothing in particular from that. I’m close to both of them, and we do have regular conversations. So it’s nothing different this week.Every word of the first part of the presser can be read here.Tomorrow’s match at Old Trafford kicks off at 2pm.