Every word of Michael Carrick’s Manchester City pre-match press conference

The first question was "Matheus [Cunha] and Ben [Sesko] obviously interpret that number 9 role in very different ways. How much of what the opposition are going to do comes into your thought process when you're selecting those? And you have to work on it in training because I think it's clear they make very different runs. Is that something you have to work out, the understanding as well in training?"

Carrick answered: "They definitely do. It's obvious they have different strengths. I think there's principles of what we're trying to achieve as a team and the way we're trying to play it would hopefully doesn't change too much with personnel, but it definitely gives us different options, if that makes sense."

"We still want to play a certain way, try certain things, but there's a different threat to Ben, to Matheus, to Bryan, to Marcus, you know, to whoever's up there. So it's a little bit on the opposition and just the balance of our team as well, and certain things we want to, we want to attack, certain spaces or whatever that may be. Sometimes it's in possession, sometimes it's without the ball, and certain things we've got to defend certain areas. So it's quite a bit that goes into it."

A reporter then asked Carrick if he thinks Marcus Rashford "is in a good place? And from your perspective, has that gone as well as you could have hoped since he came back?"

Carrick replied: "Really pleased with Marcus. Yeah, really pleased with him in so many ways. I think it's pretty obvious with his performances. Again, he was a real threat again on Sunday, unfortunately not get a little bit more success, but he was a real threat. Yeah, I'm not really sure what else to say. You know, we're just really pleased to have him. He's doing a lot of things really well and settled back in really quickly."

The reporter asked "just on the fact that he wasn't used tonight [against Sabah], was that a precaution after what he felt at the weekend?"

Carrick: "A little bit of that, yeah, a little bit of that, and trying to share the load a little bit to a point as well. And we've got good options, so there's a trying to keep everyone fresh, but it was a point where, like Ben, to get good minutes tonight to get him up to speed. So there's always a bit of a challenge in getting that right, but it was nice to keep Marcus fresh, you know, and ready for the weekend."

The next reporter asked "You obviously were able to rotate a bit in the second half, but how hard is it to take Bruno off? Well, he seems to play every minute every game, but there's going to have to be a point where you say, come on, mate."

The head coach replied: "We only had 5 subs, so we had to make certain decisions on what that looked like. Of course he's like anybody else. He has played an awful lot, but I think we're developing the group and the squad to be able to accommodate that in different ways, you know. Tonight was just one of those things. There was decisions to be made and he ended up staying on."

The next question was "when Elliot Anderson signed for Manchester City, he said growing up, City have been the kings of Manchester during his lifetime. Do you think that's a fair reflection as to where this derby is at?"

The Wallsend man replied: "I'm definitely not using that phrase at all, no. I understand it, and I think going into the Champions League game tonight and talking about the expectation there, I think it's a really good thing that it's shifted in a way, and all of a sudden there's different things asked of us now to maybe what was a few months ago, and we're in the Champions League. That in itself shows the steps we've made and we need to be in the later stages of that."

"And then the expectations around that, we know that and we're humble enough and realistic enough to know where we've come from in recent history and we need to be, we need to, we want to be better and we want to be challenging more. So that's where we're at. It doesn't mean that we can't and we won't. It means we still hope, we believe and we expect that we can be and we should be."

A reporter then drew parallels between new signing Yorui Tielemans and Carrick himself, saying "is he the type of midfield technician that United have been missing perhaps since you left?"

"Um, I don't want to talk about me," he replied.  "As I said before about the four midfielders that played tonight, they're all technical and able to take the ball and play forward, whether that's a pass, a run, a dribble, and connect the game forward. I think it's nice to be able to draw upon that and have that in the team. And Youri settled in fantastic. Andrey has settled in great. Mason's a little bit— we're asking him to do slightly different things than maybe what he's done in the past, but I think you've seen tonight and in pre-season how natural it is for him to be able to do that. "

"Going back to Youri, every game he's getting better, and you can see the connections and the understanding between each other is growing all the time."

The final question was: "I imagine before that first City game, it was all a bit of a whirlwind taking the job, trying to prepare the players. Did it ever cross your mind that 9 months later that you would have done well enough to earn the job full-time and that you'd be facing City again? I mean, was it something that ever entered your mind at that point?"

The manager responded: "Yeah, I said it. I think I said it pretty early on. All the decisions we were making was if we were going to be here for a period of time. I never knew how long that was going to be. I still don't. But you're always planning to what the future, what we want it to look like and the direction we want to go. And that was from day one. Obviously it was quick and it was a turnaround and there was a bit, as I've just said, about right around that game where there's a bit of an unknown, to be honest with you. So the performance the lads gave was incredible with all that. But there was definitely always, always has been, always will be for me, was from the start, was planning to try and get this club to where we want to get it in the long term."

That concluded the presser.
As it was conducted straight after the Sabah post-match presser, there will not be an embargoed section this time.