Michael Carrick's Decision on Luke Shaw for Manchester City Match

Michael Carrick will leave it as late as possible before deciding whether Luke Shaw can face Manchester City, with the defender still being carefully managed after a recent setback.

The 31-year-old was left out of Thursday’s 4-0 Champions League win over Sabah FK, having been withdrawn during the 2-2 draw with Everton. That omission was no tactical surprise, Carrick stressed, but a medical one.

“We'll have to see,” he told reporters when pressed on Shaw’s chances for Sunday. “We just kind of looked after him a little bit. He wasn't quite ready for [Sabah] 100%, so we didn't risk it. We'll see how he is over the next couple of days or so.”

Carrick is walking a tightrope: Shaw’s experience and balance down the left are vital in a game of this magnitude, yet the manager refuses to gamble with a player who has only just been nursed through a delicate spell.

A personal marker for Carrick

This derby carries an extra edge for Carrick. It’s a rerun of his first match in charge after stepping in for Ruben Amorim on an interim basis back in January, a night that reset the mood around the club.

On that occasion, United snapped a four-game winless run with a sharp, disciplined display to beat Pep Guardiola’s side, Bryan Mbeumo and Patrick Dorgu providing the goals in a statement victory.

Carrick is determined that result does not become a crutch.

“It'll definitely be different, just because no games are ever the same,” he said. “I think there's no way we're assuming we won last year, we'll do the same things and everything will be the same.

“I think the confidence that we've built over a period of time and feel like we're getting better all the time, I think that helps us. We know it's a big game, we know it's an important game. There's a lot riding on it, it's pretty obvious to say, but we're looking forward to it.

“We've got a short space of time to recover and prepare for it, but we'll make the most of it.”

Short turnaround, high stakes, no excuses. That’s the tone from the dugout.

From stopgap to standard-bearer

When Carrick first stepped in, it was on a temporary basis, a steady hand while the club weighed up its options. He responded with 12 wins from his first 17 matches, a run that forced the conversation in a different direction and ultimately earned him the job on a permanent basis at the Theatre of Dreams.

Outside the club, the noise was different. With INEOS taking a leading role in the hierarchy, speculation swirled about a marquee name arriving in the summer. Carrick insists that chatter never altered how he worked.

“I think I said it pretty early on, I was always planning to be [manager beyond the summer],” he admitted. “All the decisions we were making were if we were going to be here for a period of time. I never knew how long that was going to be, I still don't!

“But you're always planning for the future, what we want it to look like and the direction we want to go, and that was from day one. The performance the lads gave was incredible with all that, but there was definitely always – has been, always will be for me – from the start was planning to try and get this club to where we want to get it in the long term.”

So Sunday is more than a derby, more than a rematch. It is another checkpoint in a project Carrick believes he has already been building for months. Whether Shaw is fit or not, the standard he has set for what comes next will not be easing off.