Manchester United have no major injury worries ahead of their Community Shield clash against Leicester City on Sunday.
José Mourinho will be boosted by the returns of Chris Smalling and Timothy Fosu-Mensah, both of whom have recovered from minor injuries and trained with the side at Carrington today.
Speaking to MUTV, the United manager said both men were in good condition, if a little short on match fitness:
They are fine now. They have recovered and they are training with the group as normal, so they are fine.
Everybody needs minutes – that is the reality. We had so little time to play and Smalling is a player who has not even played one minute, but it is a little bit the same for everyone.
Despite the lack of injuries, Mourinho will be worried about the lack of match fitness of his players – with the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Matteo Darmian, Marouane Fellaini, Morgan Schneiderlin and Anthony Martial only returning to training last week after recovering from international duty at Euro 2016.
But Mourinho says he is working on getting those players up to speed as soon as possible:
One thing is to start five weeks ago like some of them and another thing is to start one week ago, it is completely different. But with the way we work we try to bring them on as fast as we can. I won’t say to top form but to a level where they are ready to compete.
That is the reality of modern football, especially when you are a team with a lot of players that go to the Euros and the Copa America. They come later, they don’t have enough holiday and we have to make them ready for the competition in a short period of time.
It is hard but this is what we have and complaining or crying is not the way to do it. The way to do is to work hard, like they are doing all the time.
Comments.
Loading comments…