Carrick Calls Talk of Favourable Start Ridiculous

Michael Carrick has no interest in the idea that Manchester United have been handed a gentle introduction to the new Premier League season. He does not even entertain it. He calls it what he thinks it is: “ridiculous”.

United open away at Hull on Saturday, facing last season’s Championship play-off winners, before welcoming Ipswich to Old Trafford on 30 August. Two newly promoted sides, back-to-back. On paper, some see a soft launch for a team that finished third last season and turned Carrick’s interim stint into a permanent appointment.

Carrick is having none of it.

“A newly promoted team away from home is a tough game,” he said, underlining the point from experience rather than theory. “I've been involved in them in the past so I'm fully aware of what's coming at us on Saturday and what we've got to be ready for.”

Hull, buoyed by promotion and a first home game back in the top flight, will treat United as a scalp. Ipswich, returning to Old Trafford for their first visit of the campaign, will bring the same hunger. Carrick knows the script: promoted teams run, press, and tackle as if every minute is a trial.

That is why the United manager bristled at the suggestion that the fixture list had been kind.

“It's not favourable,” he said. “It's an easy thing to throw out there but it's pretty ridiculous. I'm not taking it that way at all.”

United arrive with expectation heavy on their shoulders after last season’s surge to third place. Carrick’s job now is to prove that was a platform, not a peak – and that starts not with a procession, but with a fight at Hull.