🚨Matheus Cunha on his altercation with Michael Carrick after the defeat to Como:
🗣️ Matheus Cunha: “After the game, Carrick walked over to me and quietly said, ‘You couldn’t even run.’
I got angry and told him, ‘Gaffer, I was probably the only one running out there!’
He turned red, looked straight at me, and walked away. But what annoyed me the most was that he was blaming the players when we were simply trying to follow the instructions he gave us.
He was the one who told us not to use man-to-man marking. He was the one who said we should look for Como on the counterattack. He was the one who told us to play those dinked passes over the defenders.
So when things went wrong, I wanted to know what exactly he expected us to do differently.
You cannot give us a plan before the game, watch that plan fall apart, and then come into the dressing room blaming players for not running. We were chasing shadows out there because Como knew exactly how to hurt us.
I told him we needed to change something. Bruno was playing as a false nine, but there was nobody consistently occupying the right positions in the final third. We weren’t creating enough, and we kept forcing passes that weren’t working.
Bruno felt I was blaming him, but that wasn’t my point. He was following instructions too. My problem was with the system, and I wanted us to find a solution before it was too late.
But suddenly, everyone was arguing. Some players felt I was questioning their effort, Bruno felt I was questioning his role, and Carrick wasn’t happy that I challenged his tactics.
Honestly, I don’t regret asking those questions. We had just been humiliated, and somebody had to say something.
You cannot tell us to follow your instructions, watch us get destroyed, and then blame us for the very things you told us to do. If the tactics were right, why did Como make us look like we’d never played football together?”