Man Utd were thumped 4-1 by Como in the Champions League – a result which left Bruno Fernandes criticising the United coaching staff and Michael Carrick raising the question of motivation and intensity about his players; United are on a seven-game winless run across all competitions Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Who was to blame for Manchester United’s miserable 4-1 defeat at Como in the Champions League? Bruno Fernandes criticised the tactical plan of the Man Utd coaches. Michael Carrick questioned the motivation of his players. If only Man Utd’s performance on the pitch in Italy was as forceful as the post-match interviews.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player This time captain Fernandes took aim at the club’s coaching staff in a stinging take-down of their pressing plan. Asked by TNT Sports about a lack of cohesion in United’s work out of possession, Fernandes defended his team-mates and put the blame on Carrick and his coaches. “It’s a decision from the staff to not press man-to-man and sometimes leave a little space in behind and try to get the ball in the first moment, to wait for them, to give them the ball,” he said. Como completed 594 passes, the most by a team in a Champions League game against Manchester United since Barcelona in April 2019 (725).
“But sometimes when you give too much the ball to these teams they get confident, they have so many bodies behind the ball that make you run a lot, make people get frustrated, and then obviously when you recover the ball the legs are, and the brain, much more difficult to make it work.” Was that tactical idea what cost Man Utd in Como? “That’s on the manager and on the staff to see it, it’s not on me,” said Fernandes. “I just said, I think sometimes we have to be more brave on the pressure, trying to take a risk of getting that press very high and making them uncomfortable – as they did to us.” A meeting between Carrick, Martinez and Wilcox repaired relations after the centre-back’s comments in Madrid. But Carrick gave a blunt response in his post-match press conference on Wednesday when Fernandes’ thoughts were put to him.
“We half pressed man-to-man in the second half and ended up conceding a goal from that,” he said. “Whatever tactics you play, if you don’t run back, you ain’t going to win.” Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Carrick is usually measured in front of the media but he made his feelings clear after the club’s winless run stretched to seven games with this loss. “I’m really angry,” he said. “For us to play in that way is not acceptable.” Manchester United are the first English team ever to concede inside the opening two minutes of back-to-back major European games (47 seconds vs Atletico Madrid, 118 seconds vs Como).
For all United did wrong in the game, it was the application of his players which was prominent in his post-match assessment. “I’ll definitely look at what we’ve done [as a coaching staff] or if it’s the motivation and the intention and the purpose and the intensity of a game of football you have to bring,” he said. “We didn’t bring that today. “You can’t turn it on and off and you can’t choose when you want to perform or when you don’t want to perform or when you give absolutely everything or when you maybe don’t,” he told TNT Sports.
Carrick, who apologised after the game to United’s travelling support, later added in his press conference: “It wasn’t just the goals. It was the manner we went about that was the difficult thing to
That wasn’t it.” It’s now two defeats in three Champions League games this season. Fernandes, Carrick and United will have to show the solutions to their problems at home to Bournemouth on Sunday, live on Sky Sports, if their winless streak is to end in the Premier League this weekend.
