Carrick Rejects Claims of Easy Start for Manchester United

Michael Carrick has branded claims that Manchester United have been handed a soft landing to the new Premier League season as “ridiculous”, insisting there will be no room for complacency in August.

United open their campaign on Saturday away to Hull, last season’s Championship play-off winners, before welcoming Ipswich to Old Trafford on 30 August – a second straight meeting with a newly promoted side.

From the outside, that sequence has been painted as the perfect launchpad for a team that finished third last season and turned Carrick’s interim stint into a permanent appointment. The narrative says United should surge out of the blocks, ride the momentum of spring and bank early points while others find their feet.

Carrick is having none of it.

“A newly promoted team away from home is a tough game,” he said, drawing on his own long experience of opening-day ambushes and fired‑up underdogs. “I've been involved in them in the past so I'm fully aware of what's coming at us on Saturday and what we've got to be ready for.

“It's not favourable. It's an easy thing to throw out there but it's pretty ridiculous. I'm not taking it that way at all.”

Hull, buoyed by promotion and a home crowd tasting top-flight football again, will treat United’s visit as a statement occasion. Ipswich will do the same when they walk out at Old Trafford at the end of the month.

Carrick’s message is blunt: ignore the fixture list noise, or the so‑called “easy start” will bite back.