Michael Carrick's Decision on Luke Shaw Ahead of Manchester Derby

Michael Carrick will leave it late before deciding whether Luke Shaw is ready to face Manchester City, as the Manchester United manager juggles derby stakes with player welfare.

Shaw, 31, missed Thursday night’s 4-0 Champions League win over Sabah FK after being taken off in the 2-2 draw with Everton, and Carrick made clear that caution won out over temptation.

“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.”

United hardly missed a beat without him in Europe, but City at the weekend is a different kind of examination. The derby always is. This one comes loaded with a bit of personal history for Carrick too.

A return to where it started

The fixture mirrors Carrick’s very first game in the dugout after he stepped in for Ruben Amorim on an interim basis back in January. On that night, under pressure and with a four-game winless run hanging over the club, United delivered.

They took down Pep Guardiola’s side with a sharp, disciplined display, Bryan Mbeumo and Patrick Dorgu grabbing the goals in a statement win that reset the mood around Old Trafford.

Anyone expecting Carrick to lean on that result as some kind of blueprint, though, was quickly put straight.

“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.”

The message is clear: respect the past, but don’t live in it.

From stopgap to standard-bearer

When Carrick first walked into the role, he did so with the “interim” tag and all the uncertainty that brings. Results changed that narrative quickly.

Twelve wins from his first 17 matches forced the club’s hand and earned him the job on a permanent basis at the Theatre of Dreams, even as noise swirled around him about what INEOS might do in the summer.

The new hierarchy were widely tipped to chase a big-name outsider. Carrick heard the speculation. He just refused to be distracted by it.

“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 not just another derby. It is another checkpoint in a project Carrick insists he started with the long view in mind.

Shaw’s late fitness test will grab the headlines before kick-off. The real story, though, is whether Carrick’s United can show once again that January’s win over City was not a one-off, but a sign of where this team is heading.