Carrick said: “You are always confident about Cristiano in those situations and it was nice to see it go in.
“You don’t become a successful team just by playing pretty football every week. At this stage, it is just about winning.
“You have to grind results out when things aren’t going well and dig in like we have done.
“Sometimes, when you get a result that way, you get more of a buzz than winning by three or four goals.”