Michael Carrick insists Manchester United remain determined to turn their fortunes around amid a terrible start to the season.
The Red Devils are currently on an eight-game winless run and travel to Stamford Bridge in the Premier League on Saturday to face Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea side, with kick-off scheduled for 12:30 UK time.
And despite increasing talk of the Englishman getting sacked, Carrick is choosing to stay focused on the task at hand – pulling United out of their slump.
United ‘hungry’ to improve
During his pre-match press conference, Carrick spoke about the feeling in the United camp, saying on Sky Sports: “My responsibility is the players. The outside is not anything for me to focus on.
“I know what we can affect, I know what we need to improve. I know as a group what help they need a little bit as well and a bit of guidance at certain times and dealing with certain things.
“Part of my direct role is them, who I care about and can affect the most directly, and of course we spoke.
“We have meetings as we do every single week, but some of the meetings go in different ways, depending on results, the situation and the feeling.
“The boys, I have to say, are hungry.
“We’re hurting because we haven’t won enough football games, but there’s an intensity, there’s a bit of an edge, there’s a disappointment, there’s a hunger to do better, for sure.”
Carrick understands the pressure
Quizzed on the speculation surrounding his future at the club, Carrick stated: “I don’t need any assurances from anyone – I totally get the position.
“I understand the job, I understand the responsibilities, I understand what comes with that, so I really don’t need any assurances from anyone in that regard.”
He added: “I am here to do my job, I am here to do the best for the team and I am desperate to make us better and improve things.
“I said after the game [against Bournemouth] I didn’t expect anything – I was literally dealing with the performance, the result, what it was.
“There was no hiding the fact dynamics and the atmosphere in the stadium was a little bit different to normal and going through that and digesting that.
“Purely, my mind was ‘what do we need to do to improve things?’”
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Juliette White 
SportJustSport writers 
Anuraj Tyagi