Manchester United beat Rosenborg 5-0 on Friday afternoon in the second pre-season game of the summer. Shea Lacey, Josh Zirkzee, Jacob Devaney, Harry Amass and Ethan Williams were all on the scoresheet in what was a dominant win for Michael Carrick’s side.
Speaking to the official site after the game, Carrick discussed his happiness with the attitude and work ethic the young players displayed.
This is the best place to be as a footballer when you’re in that zone and you’re confident and that’s obviously my job to try and get the players in that frame of mind. The senior players at this stage, they’re finding their way, but you can see they’re in a good place and kind of getting used to having good results over a period of time, which is good. The younger players, when you see them expressing themselves and being themselves and keep pushing themselves to be better, I think some of the play second half was really, really good. I was delighted to see that from them, because you hope that. They’ve all got potential in different ways, and you want them to fulfil it and keep pushing themselves and they certainly did that.
At this stage, Carrick’s main focus is keeping the players fit and getting them ready for the new season.
Clean sheet, scoring goals, and everyone, by the looks of it, coming through injury-free is what you want at this stage, really. As much as we want everything to improve and performances to be better all the time, I think keeping players fit and progressing through pre-season is as important as anything. So, two games in, two weeks in, I think we can take where we are and we’re pretty happy. The second half, the younger players coming on, I thought they were fantastic. They played as a team really well and deserve what they got second half.
It’s important to build through this pre-season, some players need more minutes than others as they go and we’re managing some players a little bit more than others. I’ve said it before the game, it’s never going to be perfect, two weeks in and you’re kind of building towards that. So, I thought there was a lot of good things, some of the goals were fantastic goals and it’s just as pleasing to keep a clean sheet. So yeah, we’re moving forward nicely.