At last, Manchester United new manager speaks for the first time

United had on Sunday morning fired former boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer following the club’s series of dreadful results.

And following Solskjaer’s sack, Michael Carrick has emerged as the new boss at Old Trafford on interim basis and the 40-year-old former United midfielder is set to take charge as the side travels to Spain for Tuesday’s Champions League group stage clash against Villarreal.

The former England midfielder has been drafted into United’s first-team coach during Jose Mourinho’s’s final season at Old Trafford while he eventually took on a more significant role after Solskjaer’s appointment.

There is no doubt that the Red Devils will need a positive result at Estadio de la Cerámica to keep qualification for the last-16 in their own hands as Carrick appeared only to be focusing on that game while ignoring the notion of succeeding Solskjaer in the long-term.

‘Well I think first and foremost it’s been literally a day, just over 24 hours, since everything unfolded and the game is not much further away in terms of time,’ said Carrick.

‘So that is all I’ve been thinking about, the game tomorrow night – throughout yesterday, throughout today and certainly throughout tomorrow. I’ve not looked past that, but of course we’ve got a game coming up after, big game on the weekend, but we’ll address that when we need to. And however long the club want me to be here, I’ll give it my best.

‘Whatever results we get, hopefully we get good ones, we’ll be trying our utmost to get good ones, we should get good ones, we believe that we should get good results, and we’ll wait and see what happens after.’

Meanwhile, National Daily had gathered from the earlier report that former Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino is the leading the race to succeed Solskjaer at United and further reports claim the Argentine would be willing to leave Paris Saint-Germain in mid-season to take charge at Theartre of Dreams.

United are understood to have twice botched attempts to sign Pochettino, first in 2016 and then again in 2018 who is believed to be favoured by former Red Devils legendary boss Sir Alex Ferguson.