Michael Carrick is ready to take penalties in Cristiano
Ronaldo’s injury-enforced absence, but he’s sure the Reds will
start banging in the goals when the 2008/09 season kicks off this
weekend.
Carrick has shown his credentials as an able understudy to United’s
regular spot-kick taker, scoring in the Community Shield shoot-out
against Portsmouth on Sunday. He also converted from 12 yards in
the pre-season friendly against Aberdeen and, of course, the
Champions League final in Moscow.
The 27-year-old has been laid low recently with the same virus that
has kept Wayne Rooney out of action. But his return as a
second-half substitute at Wembley comes as a welcome boost to Sir
Alex’s injury-hit squad.
“I’m just about back to normal now,” he told MUTV. “I’ll
have a good week training and look forward to playing Newcastle.
Sunday’s game was too soon for me to start, but it was good to get
out there. We’re all looking forward to the first game of the
season.”
Should United earn a spot-kick against Kevin Keegan’s men in Sunday
16:00 BST kick-off at Old Trafford, Carrick won’t shirk the
responsibility if he’s on the pitch. “I quite enjoy taking
penalties actually,” adds the Wallsend-born midfielder.
“I’ve never really taken penalties throughout my career, but I
took one at Aberdeen and I’ve scored in penalty shoot-outs. If a
penalty comes up, I’d step up no problem.”
The Reds have scored just once in the last three games – Fraizer
Campbell struck against Espanyol – but that hasn’t got Carrick
worried. “It’s not really a concern,” said the Englishman. “It’s
still early days, the performances are there and we’re creating the
chances. We’ve got the lads to stick them away. In an ideal world
you’d be winning every match comfortably. Last season we didn’t
start all that well, but hopefully we’ll start next week by banging
the goals in and getting ourselves off the mark.
“Since the first game back against Aberdeen, we’ve all progressed
and got better with every game. Sunday’s was a good performance.
But we want to improve and get better. This is one step further in
our preparations so I’m sure we’ll be ready.
“It’s nice to start the season well. We’ve won the Community Shield
this year, and we started last year in a similar fashion. We just
want to keep improving and progressing and we’re hoping to have an
even better season this time around.”