{"id":467065,"date":"2026-03-10T03:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T03:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467065\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T03:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T03:12:11","slug":"manchester-united-paul-scholes-did-not-intend-to-offend-michael-carrick-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467065\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester United: Paul Scholes did not intend to offend Michael Carrick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paul Scholes says an Instagram story post about Manchester United interim head coach Michael Carrick was &#8220;in no way intended to be offensive&#8221; towards his former team-mate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following United&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/live\/ce3gk53v32nt\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2-1 Premier League defeat<\/a> by Newcastle United last Wednesday &#8211; their first loss under Carrick &#8211; Scholes wrote: &#8220;Michael has definitely got something special about him&#8230;cos Utd have been [expletive] last four games.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scholes, who played alongside Carrick in United&#8217;s midfield for seven years, was criticised for his comments, with former team-mate Patrice Evra saying &#8220;I hope he was hacked&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 51-year-old explained his post on the The Good, The Bad &amp; The Football podcast on Monday alongside former Reds players Wes Brown and Nicky Butt, saying he has spoken to Carrick about the issue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was in no way intended to be offensive towards Michael,&#8221; the former England international said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Michael is one of the nicest people you will ever meet in football, he&#8217;d be the last person that I would want to offend. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I messaged Michael anyway. I went straight to Michael and said, &#8216;Look, I was never intending to upset you&#8217;. And I don&#8217;t think I needed to say that anyway and he told me himself he wasn&#8217;t upset by it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Carrick took over after the sacking of Ruben Amorim and was unbeaten in his first seven games, but United&#8217;s most recent performances have not matched those that beat Manchester City, Arsenal and Fulham at the start of his time at the helm. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They are currently third in the league and in a good position to qualify for the Champions League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think people have just taken it differently from what was meant,&#8221; Scholes added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The only thing I was saying was that I don&#8217;t think they played that well the last four games and he&#8217;s still managing to get results.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We had the greatest manager in the world and he always said sometimes you need a bit of luck. So with sending-offs and different things that happen through games, sometimes you do need a bit of luck, that&#8217;s all I was saying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Brown added: &#8220;I can see it both ways. When Scholesy explained it to me, it completely made sense. But how I read it was as if he&#8217;s having a go at him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scholes replied: &#8220;What Wes said, and I hadn&#8217;t heard that before, was that I was saying he&#8217;s just a lucky manager. I wasn&#8217;t saying that, I was saying he&#8217;s a very talented manager because he&#8217;s getting results with a team that, for the last four games since the West Ham game, I didn&#8217;t think were playing very well, that&#8217;s all.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier this year, United defender Lisandro Martinez <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/c3wz5z4pve9o\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hit back<\/a> at comments from Butt and Scholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Scholes says an Instagram story post about Manchester United interim head coach Michael Carrick was &#8220;in no&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-467065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}