Carrick: I’ll adapt to defensive role

Michael Carrick is happy to try ease Manchester United’s injury crisis by playing at centre-back in the coming weeks.

Carrick made his first appearance of the season on Sunday when he came off the bench to replace injured centre-back Marcos Rojo in United’s 1-0 derby defeat to Manchester City.

United expect Rojo, who dislocated his left shoulder sliding in for a tackle, to be out for some time, a significant blow to Louis van Gaal given he is already short of options at centre-half.

The United manager is set to be without Phil Jones for some time as the England centre-back is suffering from shin splints — his second injury of the season.

Jonny Evans has not played for more than six weeks because of an ankle injury while Chris Smalling is serving a one-match ban for his careless dismissal for two petty fouls on Sunday.

Carrick has played at centre-back on occasion throughout his career and he would have no problem starting there in Saturday’s game against Crystal Palace.

“If I need to play there, then fine. I have not had a lot of football recently so I will play anywhere,” said Carrick.

“It’s not somewhere I have played an awful lot of games. I had spells of playing there over the years, playing two or three or four games in a season. “But I don’t mind. I will play anywhere.”

Rojo raised hopes of a speedy recovery yesterday when he tried to play down the extent of the injury on Twitter.

“Gracias a todos por los mensajes. Gracias a dios fue solo un mal momento/thank you all for your messages. thank god it was nothing,” the Argentinian wrote on his Twitter account.

However United believe Rojo, who speaks only limited English, made something of a mistake in his translation of the Spanish part of his tweet.

“Solo un mal momento” translates as “only a bad moment”, rather than “nothing“, and the club believe the defender’s injury is serious.

Rojo was discharged from hospital on Sunday evening and the club have confirmed that the defender had suffered a dislocation.

Medical estimates of a recovery time from such an injury range from six weeks to three months.

On the plus side for United, Marouane Fellaini will face no action from the FA after he was cleared of intentionally spitting at Sergio Aguero.

City’s Argentinian striker tumbled to the floor after Fellaini kicked his standing leg, and the hosts appealed for a penalty, which was not given.

Fellaini clearly did not feel it was a foul and he bent down to shout at the Argentinian as the striker lay face down on the floor.

TV replays showed that some spit appeared to exit the Belgian’s mouth as he unleashed his tirade at the striker, but after reviewing the incident, the FA’s disciplinary panel believe it was not intentional.

City’s victory on Sunday was their fourth successive derby triumph in the league and Pablo Zabaleta has no doubt the Blues should be regarded as the top club in Manchester.

Louis van Gaal claimed United were the biggest club in town on the eve of the derby but Zabaleta certainly thinks otherwise.

“Now it’s a bit different. We are dominating at the moment in the derby games. But that shows how Manchester City are improving year after year.”