Carrick: No Excuses For Defeat

Michael Carrick is making no excuses for Manchester United’s 2-1 defeat at Bournemouth and the experienced midfielder believes the Reds must now stick together in hard times.

Junior Stanislas opened the scoring at the Vitality Stadium and, after Marouane Fellaini equalised with a first-half finish, former United Academy graduate Joshua King bagged a 54th-minute winner.

The results compounds a taxing week for United following the 0-0 draw with West Ham at Old Trafford and a 3-2 defeat at Wolfsburg that saw Louis van Gaal’s men eliminated from the Champions League.

"We are bitterly disappointed and it is a terrible way to finish the week," Carrick told MUTV after the final whistle on the South Coast. "We wanted to bounce back today. We have left ourselves short again, the set-pieces have killed us. We had chances and they had chances but it is about the result and we haven’t got the result, so it’s the end to a very disappointing week."

United were without eight injured players ahead of kick-off and disappointingly lost Jesse Lingard to a suspected hamstring problem during the first half. Bastian Schweinsteiger was also suspended for the game, but Carrick is refusing to blame the defeat on that long list of absentees.

"I could say excuses but you get injuries and you have to deal with them," he said. "That is why we have got the squad and that is why we are the club we are because, through the season, you are going to get injuries and that is part and parcel of it. It is not easy to do but you have still got to go out there, perform and win matches. We have got to get back to doing that as quickly as possible."

Attention now turns to next weekend’s match against Norwich City and Carrick admits his team-mates must bounce back. "The only thing to do now is stick together, get back to the training ground, work hard and perform next week. That is the only way to put things right, on the pitch. We can do a lot of talking but it’s about results and, starting next week, we have to go on a run."