But his decision to drop Cristiano Ronaldo paid off with Carrick strongly rejecting any suggestion that Rangnick had some input on choosing the starting line-up.
“That’s not the case, no,” Carrick said. “We came here with a plan.
“I kind of knew how Chelsea would play and we wanted to stop the passes through to Jorginho and Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
“There were a few changes to freshen it up and it’s what we decided to go with today. We almost pulled it off.”