Manchester United Football Club kept the ball rolling in the Premier League over the weekend, with the Red Devils beating Burnley 2-0. In the dying embers of that fixture, Paul Pogba pulled up limp with an apparent injury. Now, the 24-year-old has been ruled out of the Manchester derby.
Where the problem occurred wasn’t all that clear, and the most expensive player in the world will be a huge loss. He’s the guy that creates chances out of nothing and makes us tick, and without him, the match will certainly be much more difficult.
Now, ahead of the eagerly anticipated clash, Jose Mourinho has given his take on the injury and he’s putting it solely down to fatigue. It would make an awful lot of sense, given he played almost 210 minutes of football in just over 48 hours, which would put a strain on any players body.
“Paul was injured because he played two hours against Anderlecht [the Europa League quarter-final last Thursday] and then he was playing 90 minutes against Burnley two days later. If you compare us with Chelsea and Liverpool we have played 18 more matches than them.” The Guardian quote Jose Mourinho as saying.
“That is half a Premier League so [consider] what that means in terms of recovering and injuries and travelling and psychological pressure and the number of training sessions … It’s not out of the context that the last two champions – I include Chelsea now and Leicester last season – didn’t play in Europe and that three years ago Liverpool were almost champions without playing European competition.”
For the most part, it had seemed like our injury situation was running quite smoothly this season, but over the last few weeks, it has changed quite a bit. Juan Mata, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Marcos Rojo are all still out; and who knows when they’ll be back.
It is all part and parcel of the game, however frustrating it may be. Jose Mourinho still has an excellent squad of players to choose from, and I’ve no doubts that we’ll be right there or thereabouts in the game tonight.
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