The reverse to the 10-man Blues, following Phil Foden’s first-half sending off, was courtesy of a controversial winner by Erling Haaland.
VAR decided the Norway international was onside when converting Josko Gvardiol’s cross but that Enzo Fernandez, who appeared well offside when attempting to pull off a diving header, would not be taken into the equation.
During his interviews with Sky Sports and MUTV, it was clear how aggrieved the boss felt about the outcome.
Carrick responds to City reverse
“It’s definitely not the result we wanted, for sure,” he said. “How it happens is worse than frustrating, in terms of the decision for the goal. I have to be honest enough, we still could have created and scored after that but the decision has a major emotional impact on the game and a factual impact on the game. To give the goal changed the momentum a little bit.
“It’s not going to change the season,” he vowed. “It’s a major impact on the game today, and it was a massive game, so there’s a long season ahead.
“We’ve got to get back to winning football matches. That’s on us, but that decision, that wasn’t on us today. It’s up to us to then create and score after that. Of course it is. We had moments. It’s not easy but it’s up to us to do that.
“We’ve seen it before. Big moments, big games like that have a huge impact, and obviously it did today. I thought we started the second half pretty well, to be honest.
“I think we did a lot of things well, to be honest, and looked like we were growing into the game and looked dangerous.
“We’ll take it from the game and move on and learn from it. But we’re not moving on lightly. We’ve got to get back to winning as a team.
“Yeah, we could have created more. We could have. That’s an answer for us, but we could have, yeah. I thought we were in good shape for a lot of the game really, I do. Until the goal flips it. I thought the game was coming to us and we’d put ourselves in certain positions where we had opportunities that, on another day, we’d certainly take them.
“That’s our second defeat at home now over 13 or 14 games or so, we’re a good team. We’ll get back to winning ways.”
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