📅 October 22, 2026
Bruno Blames the Staff, Carrick Blames the Effort: United in Disarray After Como
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The 4-1 in Como was bad enough. What came after it was worse. Bruno Fernandes went on TNT Sports and put the game plan on the coaching staff. Michael Carrick answered in his press conference by questioning whether his players had run. Eight days after Lisandro MartĂnez went public about the club, the captain and the manager disagreed in public about why United lost.
United haven’t won in seven games, according to Sky Sports and ESPN. Bournemouth come to Old Trafford on Sunday.
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What Bruno said
He was asked whether the players could solve the problems on the pitch themselves. His answer went straight to the pressing.
“It’s a decision from the staff to not press man-to-man and sometimes leave a little space in behind and try to get the ball in the first moment, to wait for them, to give them the ball,” he told TNT Sports. “That’s on the manager and on the staff to see it, it’s not on me.”
He said what he wanted instead: “I think sometimes we have to be more brave on the pressure, trying to take a risk of getting that press very high and making them uncomfortable – as they did to us.”
He also named the pattern everyone had noticed. “It’s not the first time, we started on the wrong foot, and they scored very early.” It was the second European game running that United were behind inside two minutes, and Opta called that a first for an English team.
How Carrick answered
Carrick was asked about it in his press conference. He said United had “half pressed man-to-man” in the second half and conceded from it. Then he widened it: “whatever system you play, whatever tactics you play, if you don’t run, and you don’t run forward, and you don’t run back,” you won’t win.
That’s not a manager defending a system. It’s a manager saying effort was the problem, on the same night his captain said the plan was. Carrick added that players “can’t choose when you want to perform,” and that “for us to play in that way is not acceptable.”
On his own job, he didn’t flinch. “I’ve not given my own position any thought,” he said, adding that he was “really angry, to be honest.”
A week of it
This is the second time in a week a senior player has gone public. After the 2-0 in Madrid, MartĂnez questioned the club’s summer recruitment. Carrick said before Leeds that the matter was done and that MartĂnez had accepted it was a mistake.
Carrick also walked over to apologise to the away end at full-time. Reporters raised the obvious comparison: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer apologising to fans at Watford in November 2021, a day before he was sacked. Carrick was on Solskjaer’s staff then. He said he always goes over to the fans and that this was no different.
Who’s right
Both of them, partly. Bruno’s point matches what happened. Como’s first goal came from Nico Paz having room to turn and shoot, and Paz scored twice and made the other. A side that sits off and waits gives a player like that time.
Carrick’s point holds too. The second goal was Tasos Douvikas running away from a defender, and Sky reported that the third came after Paz caught Carlos Baleba in possession. No pressing scheme fixes that.
The bigger problem is where the argument happened. A captain criticising the plan on live TV, and a manager answering by questioning the players, is a squad and staff talking past each other. Two weeks of that have come with two European defeats.
The fix is simple to say and hard to do: a win on Sunday. Anything less and the questions about Carrick’s future get louder.
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Sources: Fernandes’s TNT Sports interview as reported by Sky Sports, NBC Sports, SportBible and Yahoo Sports; outlets differ slightly on wording and the quotes above use Sky’s. Carrick’s press conference from ESPN, Sky Sports and Yahoo Sports. The winless run from Sky Sports and ESPN. The Solskjaer comparison and Carrick’s answer from Yahoo Sports. The goals from our match report; the Baleba detail from Sky Sports.