Michael Carrick eager to avoid Man Utd mood swings

By Jamie Gardner, Press Association Chief Sports Reporter

Michael Carrick believes his Manchester United players never let themselves get carried away by their flying start under him.

The Red Devils could barely have wished for a better impact from Carrick as he steered them to four consecutive victories after succeeding Ruben Amorim as head coach last month.

Scraping a draw at West Ham in their last match on February 10 may have seemed a disappointment to many fans – not least Frank Ilett, whose well-publicised wait for a haircut continued as United failed to win a fifth straight game.

But Carrick said his players had not taken the result at the London Stadium as a step back.

“We’ve got to be a bit balanced in terms of not getting carried away before that (West Ham) game in terms of winning games, and certainly not getting carried away if we don’t come away with the three points,” he said ahead of Monday’s match against Everton.

“There’s an understanding of games are tough to win in this league, and it’s proven, not just for us. A lot of the performance in terms of the control and how we went about the game was there, there were a lot of good things in the game.

“It probably got open towards the end when we were chasing it a little bit more, but we looked dangerous.

“And scoring a late goal is a big positive, so I think it’s an important point for us. Yeah, of course, we wanted to win the game, but certainly we’re not thinking that it was all bad or it’s a big negative.”

United sit fourth in the Premier League heading into their next challenge against Everton at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, with the Toffees led by one of Carrick’s former United bosses, David Moyes.

“David’s teams are hard to play against, he’s such a good manager, and with the experience he’s got, he knows what it takes to have success in this league,” Carrick said.

“It’s one where we’ve had a lot of time to look forward to it. Going away to Everton, I know it’s a new stadium but historically it’s always been tough.

“The supporters and the atmosphere they create, it’s always been one of the toughest ones when I’ve played away from home so we’re aware of that and try to be our best where we can.

“We’ve got things to improve on, but we’ve got a good base and a good foundation moving forward, good spirit. So we’ll have to draw on pretty much all of that.”

United may be able to welcome back midfielder Mason Mount, with Carrick revealing he was getting closer to a return after not featuring since the Manchester derby in mid-January.