Michael Carrick’s resurgent Manchester United beat Arsenal in the Premier League, breaking the record for the first time in 16 years.

Michael Carrick’s successive wins over Arsenal and Manchester City as Manchester United manager means he has broken an astonishing 16-year record.

And in doing so, he achieved something that no other Premier League manager has achieved since David Moyes in 2010, according to Opta – winning back-to-back top-flight games against teams in the top two at the start of the matchday. Since Moyes’ Everton recorded those two wins, they have had 36 chances to achieve this feat.

It took powerful shots from Patrick Dorg and Matheus Cunha to break the league leaders and end a 12-game unbeaten run, but it was a far cry from a smash-and-grab victory by the Red Devils, who were under pressure for the first 30 minutes and fell behind through Lisandro Martinez’s own goal.

However, they bounced back and took the lead, beating Mikel Merino’s 84th-minute equalizer to seal the victory and claim their first Premier League title at the Emirates Stadium since 2017.

Carrick then gave an interesting answer regarding the possibility of him remaining as Manchester United’s long-term manager rather than interim manager until the end of the season.

Asked if a long-term project was starting to appear, Carrick told Sky Sports: “I’m not starting to see it.[I’ve]been here less than two weeks and I said we’re going to make every decision in the greater good of the football club and the bigger picture.”

“My job is to not get carried away with the two big results, the big performances, and try to continually add to that. What’s really important is always what’s next.”

“I’m enjoying it. It’s a great position. What happens next…that’s what it is, but at the moment I’m really enjoying it. I’m going to continue to do what I can.”

Regarding the match itself, he added: “I think it was different from last week. It was two completely different games. We said before the game that today would be different, but they put a lot of pressure on us in different ways.”

“We’ve probably never felt as much of a real regular threat as we did last week, but I thought there were times when we looked really dangerous. Coming here and scoring three goals the way we did, going down one and coming back, then faltering and continuing to move forward, Matthäus had some great moments.”

“The players gave a lot of effort today. It probably couldn’t have been easier. Last week it wasn’t easy, but the flow of the game, the momentum was with us pretty much the whole time. We had to dig deeper this time. It was a big effort. I’m really proud of it.”

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Video credit: TNT Sports

The last time a manager was responsible for back-to-back wins against the top two teams in the league was Moyes, almost 6,000 days ago, in February 2010, during his first spell as Everton manager, before replacing Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford.

It’s even more coincidental that one of those wins was against Manchester United. His Toffees beat Chelsea 2-1 thanks to a brace from Louis Saha, and 10 days later they beat the Red Devils 3-1 with goals from Diniyar Bilyaddinov, Ryan Gosling and Jack Rodwell, with Dimitar Berbatov scoring a comeback goal.

In the intervening years, Premier League teams faced the top two sides 36 times in a row, without winning at least one of those matches.

It took Ruben Amorim 35 Premier League games to record back-to-back wins against Sunderland and Liverpool, but Carrick has already reached 29% of his wins to match his predecessor’s win total last season.

The Red Devils have yet to sign anyone in the January transfer window, and instead the success Carrick is enjoying is due to the rejuvenation of discarded or underused players such as Cobie Mainoo and Harry Maguire.

“Michael (Carrick) came in and did a great job for us,” Maguire, who was named player of the match, told Sky.

“He brought fresh energy and really revitalized the group. Obviously, two tough games (against City and Arsenal), everyone thought we would beat them without leaving many points behind, but we managed to win both games.”

“The fans deserve it. It’s been a tough few years for them and they deserve results like City (last week) and today.”