Michael Carrick reveals conversations with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

Did you pick his brains?
 
“I think, friendships, you have conversations… I’ve got a lot of friends in places that I can pick on if I need to. I’m not that one that bothers a lot of people to be honest, but… He’s certainly there if ever I need.”
 
Game against Man City, very proactive. Arsenal, can you do the same, or do you need to be more passive, bit more reactive, to go toe to toe with them at the Emirates?
 
“It’s playing to what we think the game needs…”
 
Which is?
 
“We’ll have to wait and see! As I said, they’re a good team, and City’s a good team. Attacking-wise, they’ve got different ways of… You know, the whole good width, you attack the box, and cover the width of the box very well, they ask questions with different ways of entering the box, down the sides, side crosses… They’re very well organised, well-drilled, you can see that. I thought we defended the box – when we had to – particularly well last week. We didn’t have to defend the box as long as people may have expected. I think we kept the game in good places for what we wanted to, and credit to the boys for that. Every game is different, there’s an element of that. It’s never the same, even when you come to half-time, you’ve had a good performance for 45 minutes. I’m never one that likes to say “Same again”, because it’s never ever the same again, you’ve got to build on it. It won’t be copy and paste, I think there are new elements that need to come into it, we need to be ready, we need to be at our best. And if we’re at our best, we’re there, we feel we’ve got a good chance.”