Carrick: Win Due To Confidence

Michael Carrick has credited Manchester United's 2-0 win at West Ham to the Reds' increased confidence, which was boosted even further with this sixth Premier League win in a row.

Two second-half goals from Juan Mata and Zlatan Ibrahimovic allowed United to emerge victorious from a third game in a week, while also extending the team's unbeaten run to 13 matches in all competitions.

During his post-match interview with MUTV, Carrick was pleased with the result and the players' momentum. "In the first-half we weren’t where we wanted to be in terms of keeping possession and creating chances," Michael said. "We just looked less sharp after only playing on Saturday, but credit should also go to them as they only played on Saturday as well and had to play with 10 men.

"But we are delighted that we saw the game out. We have kept our run going and confidence is high, which makes such a massive difference in games like this because we feel as if we can see that finishing line and it ultimately drove us over the line to give us the three points."

With the game still goalless, David De Gea pulled off a great save to deny Michail Antonio and that proved to be a costly miss for West Ham as United took the lead through just four minutes later.

"It was a top save from David," Carrick told us. "We know how good he is and he’s been making saves like that for years. It was a very big moment in the game and thankfully Juan went down the other end and bagged that goal for us to turn things in our favour.

"Early on in the season, things like that weren’t going our way but now we are playing well and you make your own luck. When you’re on the kind of run we are on, it makes a difference."

While the introduction of Mata made a big difference to the game, with the Spaniard scoring the opening goal, Carrick also reserved praise for the contribution of fellow substitute Marcus Rashford.

"Pace makes a big difference," he said. "There was space out there and he came on to exploit it. You could sense he was going to create something as he nearly got inside a couple of times before he set up the goal. He did really well to lay off Juan, he took his chance and so did Ibra so we can go home happy."

United earned a crucial win on what was a first trip to West Ham’s new London Stadium and Carrick, an ex-Hammer, admitted it felt strange not to play at Upton Park. "It was odd," he observed. "Seeing the outside of the ground coming in was strange but I’ve been a United player a long while and that’s my home now, but to come here and not be back at Upton Park was slightly different."