Man Utd Match Centre
Man Utd Team News Update: Mourinho Without At Least 6 Players For Leicester Game
Manchester United will be without at least six players for their opening Premier League game with Leicester City on Friday night.
Premier League returns on Friday night as Manchester United kick-off the 2018/19 campaign by welcoming Leicester City to Old Trafford.
Jose Mourinho failed to add to his squad on deadline day so he’ll have to head in to the new season with his current crop of players but the United squad could be stretched tomorrow night.
Mourinho held his first pre-match press conference of the season today and he provided a full team news and injury update to ManUtd.com ahead of the visit of Leicester.
The United boss confirmed that Antonio Valencia has been ruled out with a calf injury that he picked up in pre-season while Sergio Romero is still recovering from knee surgery that he sustained before the World Cup.
Nemanja Matic is facing time on the sidelines after undergoing surgery on an abdominal injury that he suffered while playing for Serbia at the World Cup while Ander Herrera is also out with a hamstring problem picked up against Bayern Munich earlier this week.
Marcos Rojo is another player who sustained an injury while representing his country in Russia so he’ll miss the season opener along with summer signing Diogo Dalot as he’s still recovering from knee surgery that he underwent in April.
Mourinho also suggested that the players who featured in the semi-finals and final of the World Cup aren’t fit enough to face Leicester but they may still need to be called upon due to the number of players unavailable.
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The United boss told the clubs website:
“No miracles. The players with a proper pre-season are fit and they are strong. For example, Alexis Sanchez had a good pre-season with lots of matches and lots of minutes. He’s more than ready but you cannot have the players who arrived only last Monday after the World Cup semi-finals or final and three weeks’ holiday. You cannot expect them to be fit.
”They returned on Monday. They trained on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and today, so you can imagine that they’re not really fit and ready, but we have needs.
“Unavailable is Romero – he had a surgery after his injury before the World Cup. Valencia – he was injured in pre-season. Marcos Rojo – he was injured in the World Cup. Dalot – he had a surgery at Porto by the end of April and is not yet ready. Ander Herrera – injured against Bayern. Matic – injured in the World Cup and surgery in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago. I think that’s it.
”This list of the injured players is an important list and today after training I will speak with that group of players because everybody is different – physically and mentally – and to see how available they feel they are because their feeling is very important and understanding how they think they can help or not help.”
The likes of Romelu Lukaku, Ashley Young, Paul Pogba, Jesse Lingard and Marouane Fellaini will all need to be assessed ahead of the game to see if they are fit to face Leicester after only returning to training this week.
