Ralf Rangnick may be forced to give youth a chance in Manchester United‘s meeting against Chelsea, with up to seven senior players out injured.
The interim manager has only 14 first-team players available for the game on Thursday night, as he tries to improve upon a dispiriting run of five defeats in United’s last eight games.
It will mean that teenage defender Alvaro Fernandez, 19, could be the latest youngster to be added to a first-team squad that already includes Hannibal Mejbri, also 19, and 17-year-old Alejandro Garnacho.
“It’s possible we will call up some of the younger players,” Rangnick said. “We have quite a few players missing tomorrow, one or two still with question marks.
“We have to see if Aaron Wan-Bissaka can be available, for example. I already played Hannibal at Liverpool.
“It’s possible but we have to be fair enough to those players, it has to be the right moment. They should have the chance to play well and perform well, it should be the right moment.”
With Paul Pogba apparently having played his last game for the club, veteran striker Edinson Cavani may be in the same situation as he recovers slowly from a calf injury.
Cavani will be back in training on Friday but, having not played since mid-March, will not be rushed back into action.
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Harry Maguire, left out of the team that lost at Arsenal at the weekend, is also unavailable.
“Fred is unfortunately not yet available, he tried to train yesterday and afterwards I had a conversation with him and, with a player like Fred, it doesn’t make sense with a muscular injury to play him too early as we would take the risk of re-injury,” said Rangnick.
“Apart from that, Harry Maguire is not available tomorrow, he has some issues with his knee. He didn’t train yesterday and today. Paul obviously, Fred, Luke Shaw, Jadon Sancho is ill – he has had tonsillitis since yesterday, couldn’t train today and won’t be available tomorrow.
“We will try to play the best possible team. Right now we have 14 in our professional team and the youngsters available and three or four (young) players will be part of the squad.”
Man Utd’s expected line-up vs Chelsea (4-2-3-1): De Gea; Dalot, Varane, Lindelof, Telles; McTominay, Matic; Elanga, Fernandes, Rashford; Ronaldo
Public shaming could making United stronger in the long-run
By Daniel Storey, i chief football writer
Even by recent standards, this has been an extraordinary week at Manchester United. Not because they have announced the appointment of their new manager or lost another game in shambolic circumstances. Nor even because, with a month of the season remaining, the interim coach of one of the biggest clubs in the world has conceded that they have no chance of competing in the Champions League next season.
Instead, it is the brazen honesty surrounding the toxic atmosphere at the club that is most startling. Rangnick spoke openly last week about the difficulties that will face Erik ten Hag when he takes over. Rangnick mentioned how obvious the issues are to everyone involved, the need for “open-heart surgery” and “two, maybe three, transfer windows”.
That all seems to have given United’s players free rein to speak candidly about the mood at the club. On Saturday, after the defeat against Arsenal, Paul Scholes revealed that Jesse Lingard had told him that the dressing room is a “disaster”. Scott McTominay subsequently cut out the middle man by telling journalists that United have a “whole load of problems in terms of players, staff, everything higher up”.
To an extent, this honesty is welcomed. As Rangnick alluded to, the only way Manchester United get back to anything approaching their best is for the severity of the situation to be laid bare. If that means that directors, technical staff and owners need to see the dirty washing aired out in public, so be it. If that all makes Ten Hag’s task in persuading his bosses of the need for systemic change, great.
But it’s still a remarkable situation for a club this wealthy and this historically significant to find themselves in. Gary Neville once described a Liverpool-Manchester United fixture as “Dog & Duck vs Red Lion”, but nobody really expected that, seven years on, there would be fights breaking out in the pub car park and glasses being thrown across the bar. And if the interim period has taught us anything, it is that you can never truly conclude with any confidence that there are not deeper depths to which your club can plunge.
This is an extract of The Score, Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up to receive the newsletter on Monday mornings here
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