Man United stuns Man City 2-0 in Michael Carrick's first game in charge
Manchester (AP): Manchester United's latest reboot is off to a flying start.
In his first game in charge, Michael Carrick saw his team pull off a stunning 2-0 win against Manchester City in the Premier League on Saturday to lift the gloom hanging over Old Trafford.
“It's a great start, there's no getting away from that,” Carrick said after goals from Bryan Mbeumo and Patrick Dorgu sealed victory in the 198th Manchester derby.
The job now is to keep the good times going.
“That's the challenge ultimately, and I think it needs to be a version of normal,” said Carrick, who was appointed head coach this week.
The former United midfielder has only signed a contract until the end of the season and has 17 games to convince the club's hierarchy to give him the job on a permanent basis after Ruben Amorim became the sixth permanent manager or head coach to be dismissed since club great Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
He could not have made a better first impression with a dominant performance against all-conquering City manager Pep Guardiola, who could do nothing but congratulate his opponent after the game.
“The better team won. There's nothing more to say,” Guardiola said. “When a team is better you have to accept it. They had an energy we didn't have. Congratulations.”
Victory had United fans singing in full voice inside Old Trafford and drowning out their fierce cross-city rivals.
“The supporters were incredible and I said yesterday that this could be a magical place,” Carrick said. “To get that feeling is exactly what we want. Hopefully it's just the start and something that we need to build on.”
The win could have been even more emphatic, with United twice hitting the frame of the goal, forcing a string of saves from City goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and having three goals ruled out for offside.
Not only did victory give United local bragging rights and boost its chances of Champions League qualification, but it also delivered another blow to City's title challenge. Defeat extended City's recent winless run in the league to four games.
United dominated the chances before and after halftime.
Harry Maguire headed against the bar inside three minutes and United saw two goals chalked off by VAR for offside before the break.
In the second half Donnarumma denied Amad Diallo, Casemiro and Mbeumo before the deadlock was finally broken in the 65th minute.
It came from another swift United attack with Bruno Fernandes leading the breakaway after a City free kick came to nothing.
Racing into the City half Fernandes slipped a pass into the run of Mbeumo and the Cameroon forward unleashed a first-time left footed shot low into the far corner.
Old Trafford erupted with chants of “United!”
It was the least Carrick's team deserved after a performance full of attacking intent.
Dorgu doubled the lead in the 76th, converting from close range after beating Rico Lewis to substitute Matheus Cunha's cross.
Amad then hit the post as United looked to press the advantage and there was still time for another substitute, Mason Mount, to find the back of the net with his first touch in the 89th, only for it to be deemed offside.
By that point, it mattered little. The day belonged to United and Carrick, who had a beaming smile on his face as he congratulated his players after the final whistle.
Up in the stands, watching on was managerial great Alex Ferguson, whose smile was as broad as anyone's inside Old Trafford.
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Tharoor slams 'underwhelming' budget, likens it to 'rearranging airbags on crashing car'
New Delhi (PTI): Describing the Budget as an "underwhelming" and a "squandered opportunity", Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday likened it to rearranging air bags on a crashing car while assuring the passengers that the chassis is sturdy and they will feel better afterwards.
Initiating the debate in Lok Sabha on the Union Budget, Tharoor quoted Mirza Ghalib's famous Urdu couplet -- 'Dil ko khush rakhne ko yeh khayaal achcha hai' -- to attack the government and said the real weakness of the budget lies in implementation as rhetoric is not matched by reality.
"This is headline management -- where promises are loud like that horn, budgets are grand, but delivery is conspicuously absent. The Budget this year has landed with a thud, not because of what it contains, but because of what it omits. Behind claims of fiscal prudence lie a more uncomfortable reality: the Indian state is shrinking not by design, but by compulsion," the Congress MP said.
Hitting out at the government for not meeting the promises it made in the agriculture sector, Tharoor said, "These announcements are like modern courtships -- promises without commitments."
"I had remarked that the 2025 Finance Bill reminded me of the garage mechanic who said, 'I couldn't fix your brakes, so I made the horn louder.' Looking at the Budget this year, I am saddened to observe that though the horn has been muted, that there hasn't been enough movement: for this Budget too appears to be a squandered opportunity, equivalent to rearranging the airbags on a crashing car, while assuring the passengers that the chassis is sturdy and they will feel better afterwards," Tharoor said.
This Budget is praised for prudence, but prudence without vision or fairness is hollow, he said.
"It ignores unemployment, rising living costs, and inequality, offering little to address the real struggles and aspirations of the aam aadmi," the Congress leader said.
The government speaks endlessly of welfare, but its spending tells a very different story as behind flashy announcements lie chronic under-utilisation and administrative failure, he claimed.
"Media reports show that of over Rs. 5 lakh crore budgeted for 53 major welfare and infrastructure schemes last year, barely 41% was spent in the first nine months of the fiscal year. Take the Jal Jeevan Mission - allocated Rs. 67,000 crore, it managed to spend an astonishingly low Rs. 31 crore in nine months. The much-touted PM Schools for Rising India scheme spent only Rs. 473 crore out of Rs. 7,500 crore.
"Most shocking of all, the Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jati Abhyuday Yojana, meant for the socio-economic upliftment of Scheduled Castes utilised merely Rs. 40 crore of its Rs 2,140 crore allocation," he said.
This is not governance but headline management -- where promises are loud, budgets are grand, but delivery is conspicuously absent, Tharoor said.
He said the reality of the government's tall promises and narratives of "model governance" was out in the open.
They are not policies grounded in outcomes, but carefully curated illusions, glossy schemes and utopian projections that might soothe the imagination but everyday life for the ordinary citizens of India remains unchanged, he said.
"Hope is repeatedly sold, but delivery remains perpetually deferred. Viksit Bharat by 2047 is an admirable ambition, but this Budget offers no credible pathway to reach it," Tharoor said.
He further said unemployment continues to rise, poverty hardens, jobs remain scarce and wages stagnant.
"Small businesses, already gasping for relief, are smothered under layers of compliance, while informal workers, who sustain our economy with their labour, are pushed further into invisibility and insecurity. They promise railways, yet stations crumble. They speak of flight, yet UDAN has flown away. Our pepper, once celebrated as black gold, withers under neglect," he said.
Education is curtailed precisely when it should be expanded, he said.
"One and a half lakh schools still function without electricity, yet 'Viksit Bharat' is spoken of as if the lights are already on. When vision is severed from reality, it ceases to be aspiration and becomes merely an illusion," he said.
A truly Viksit Bharat will not be built on slogans, speeches or symbolism, but on delivery that reaches the last citizen of India, Tharoor asserted.
"Turning promises into outcomes is not a favour. It is not a choice. It is our kartavya," he added.
Tharoor pointed out that government expenditure as a share of GDP has declined over the past decade, briefly rising during the pandemic before reverting close to its 2016 level, driven by stagnant revenue mobilisation.
"Tax receipts have remained flat relative to GDP, disinvestment has underperformed, and non-tax revenues increasingly rely on extraordinary transfers such as RBI dividends -- an unsustainable substitute for a stable revenue base. More troubling is the shift in the tax burden towards individuals, bearing a greater share of the tax burden than corporations, despite sharp post-pandemic profit growth," he said.
Capital expenditure is emphasised, yet weak demand, stagnant wages, high youth unemployment, compressed welfare spending, and inadequate devolution to states, all persist -- leaving India fiscally disciplined but developmentally constrained, without the revenue capacity or strategic clarity to deliver real economic security for the aam aadmi, he said, adding that this is why he calls it an "underwhelming budget".
