Michael Carrick responds to Roy Keane's brutal criticism of his 'big mouth' wife and Man Utd coaching team as interim boss discusses INEOS and expectations in first press conference

Neville, Rio Ferdinand and Paul Scholes are just some of Carrick's former team-mates who are now opinion formers in the media while Roy Keane, who he never played with and who he effectively replaced when he signed for the club in 2006, gave the new coach a taste of what was to come with some butal comments about his wife and coaching staff on the Stick to Football podcast. 

Keane had criticised Carrick back in 2014, prompting an X-rated response from the midfielder's wife Lisa. And it seems that Keane has not buried the hatchet more than a decade on. "Well, his wife can always come in because she’s got a bit of a big mouth sometimes," Keane said, later remarking "She's probably doing the team talk."

Neville, meanwhile, said that Carrick should not be appointed permanent boss, preferring Mauricio Pochettino or Thomas Tuchel to be in charge for the start of next season.

Asked about Keane's comments in his first press conference since being named coach until the end of the season, Carrick said: "Honestly, it didn't bother me." 

Asked how he would cope with so many people opining about his work from now on, the former United midfielder added: "They're not putting more pressure on me, I don't feel that. I think it's just part of it, I understand the role, there's plenty of opinions around, some are positive, some aren't so much. 

"It's totally irrelevant in terms of me and how I go to work and what I focus on. I kind of know already what we want to improve on and how we want to work with the players and I've already said about improving things, there's a lot of opinions, a lot can be said. It is the way of the world, I'm not going to pay too much attention to the most of that. It's not for me to do that, I think for me and the players and the staff it's a focus on how we're going to succeed really. That's our job, that's our responsibility, that's what our focus and our minds should be at, is doing what we can for this club."

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Carrick met with co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and majority owners Joel and Avram Glazer on Thursday following an executive board meeting at United's training ground at Carrington. Carrick said he enjoyed meeting the INEOS chief and the Glazer family and pledged to work closely with director of football Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada. Wilcox led the process to appoint a caretaker boss after his explosive row with Amorim which led to the Portuguese being sacked.

He explained: "I've spoke to Jason an awful lot and working closely with Jason and Omar as well over the last few days, we've spoke a lot as you'd imagine. The owners, the ownership group were in and around it, it was nice to see them and meet them yesterday and have a small chat with them, taking care of business in some ways. We were able to share a few things, so I wish us all the very best and it was good to see them.

"We want to be near the top of the league, we want to be top of the league. That's pretty obvious to say, but we've got to take some small steps towards that and European football obviously would be a step forward and we've got to keep pushing."

Carrick could face his first broadside from Neville and Keane on Saturday as both pundits will be working for Sky Sports on his first match as United boss at home to Manchester City.

But he said the overall feeling he had about his first game in charge was one of excitement. He said: "It's fantastic to be here, it's a great feeling for me to be in this position. I've played different roles for this club and learnt to fall in love with the club for so long, it's a massive part of my life and has been for so long. So I'm fully aware of the position I'm in, in so many different ways. As well as that I'm eager to succeed, we've got a big job to do, it's an important job and it always is here, to win games and to play well and to do it in a certain way."