Carrick: Big Picture Brighter

While there was understandable gloom in the away dressing room at St Andrew's, Michael Carrick insists there is still plenty to be cheerful about as United closed out 2010 as league leaders.

The midfielder admitted he and his team-mates felt "hard done by" after Lee Bowyer's controversial late equaliser for Birmingham City robbed the Reds of two points, but when the anger subsides, he feels the mood in the camp should soon become upbeat again.

"It's easy to get carried away with that result and we were certainly down when we came off the pitch," Carrick told MUTV.

"Late goals are always hard to take but given how it happened we feel hard done by. There was a push in the back and then obviously the handball. But it's done now, so we have to dust ourselves down and move on.

"We're still in a good position when you look at the bigger picture. We haven't lost, we're in good form - we played well at times tonight, controlling the game - and so we go into the next game looking to keep the momentum up."

The momentum is certainly with Dimitar Berbatov at the moment - the Bulgarian put the Reds 1-0 up at Birmingham with his third goal in the space of three days. Carrick just wishes United could have added to his opener and sealed the victory.

"It was a good move and a terrific finish by Berba," said Carrick, recalling the strike on MUTV.

"His confidence in front of goal is very high at the moment and hopefully that continues for a long time. His goal put us in a great position but if we had done better with a couple more opportunities on the counter-attack then we would have been a lot happier.

"That's the hard part to take about their goal going in - the fact that we had managed to get ourselves in front in a tough game."

Carrick denied that playing two matches in just over 48 hours had affected United's players in the final, ultimately costly moments at St Andrew's.

"I felt good physically, even towards the end," he said. "It was just that they sent the big man on (Nikola Zigic) and started putting balls in the box, and our instinct was to drop off and defend. Like I said earlier, we had the opportunities on the counter-attack but our second goal just wasn't to be."

Although Carrick does not feel fatigue was a factor in the loss of two points, he's nevertheless glad of a comparatively long break before the Reds' next assigment - a return to the West Midlands to face West Brom this Saturday, New Year's Day.

"It's a long time until the next game now! So we'll be ready, we'll recover from this, we've come through the game with no more injuries. The squad's looking strong now and we look forward to the next game."