Michael Carrick took his place at the Estadio Metropolitano media gathering on Monday night, briefly unaccompanied as Yoro and the club's press officer were still making their way to join him. For the next 24 minutes, Carrick addressed questions about United's troubled start to the campaign and an upcoming stretch of fixtures that places his team at two of the most demanding venues in the sport.

A stalemate against Tottenham — who had finished the match a player short — left United with their lowest points tally through six league fixtures at this stage of a campaign in four decades. Provided his squad come through the Metropolitano unscathed on Tuesday night, a trip to Elland Road follows that weekend.

Welcoming the test that lay ahead, Carrick called on everyone at the club to match his own appetite for it, adding that periods of difficulty had a way of revealing who truly stood by you. Within the squad, he indicated, certain players had demonstrated a genuine commitment to the club's future. Carrick also noted that, in his view, the current period of difficulty would pass in time.

When a reporter asked whether he felt under pressure, Carrick said the answer depended on how one chose to define the term. He added that, having experienced both the highs and the lows of the sport, external pressure held no sway over the way things felt to him. Carrick said no external reference point shaped what the outcome ought to resemble.

Pointing to Diego Simeone's tenure of 15 years at Atlético, Carrick noted that the two of them were seated together — a manager who had navigated that club through extended periods of difficulty — and expressed his view that the current spell of trouble would pass. He noted that Atlético had won league titles and reached the latter rounds of the Champions League on a number of occasions. Carrick described both Ferguson and Simeone as managers who had constructed enduring legacies at their respective clubs, and said that building a team and navigating the sport involved working through setbacks along the way.

Various clubs within the competition have posted winning runs during the campaign, though those runs have not formed any single consistent pattern. United made the trip to Madrid without Kobbie Mainoo and Luke Shaw, both of whom had been absent from training at Carrington on Monday. No squad list for the trip was released by the club, with a decision on whether both players would be included still pending.

The timing of Shaw's second fitness setback of the campaign drew attention to United's transfer activity, with no left-back reinforcement brought in over the summer window. With both Dorgu and Mazraoui — the two players who had rotated through that role across three September fixtures — unavailable, Carrick's right-back options for Tuesday evening were narrowed to Diogo Dalot and teenager Harry Amass. Benjamin Sesko's recurring shin complaint also returned, leaving United with another forward unavailable.

Matthijs de Ligt joined the travelling party despite having been absent from matchday action for close to twelve months. Carlos Baleba, brought in during the summer transfer window for a reported £70 million, came off the bench to replace Tielemans just before the hour mark on Saturday, making his first outing in a United shirt; an ankle problem picked up ahead of his summer transfer from Brighton had kept the Cameroon international out of action.

Erik Forsberg's half-hour contribution off the bench caught attention during the draw with Tottenham — his introduction unable to prevent Spurs from equalising late on. Carrick told reporters that Forsberg brings a different quality to how the midfield functions and that his use would be managed according to the demands of individual matches. At the same venue, Simeone and Atlético defender David Hancko addressed the media separately, characterising United as a well-organised side despite their patchy start to the season — an assessment informed partly by Atlético's pre-season defeat to Carrick's team in Stockholm. Simeone noted that his squad would need to operate at their own standard to find an opening, as the club looked to recover from their opening defeat to Liverpool at Anfield and keep their ambitions of reaching the June final on home ground intact.