Manchester United host Barcelona at Old Trafford in the first leg of our Champions League quarter-final clash on Wednesday evening.
The Catalan club opened the lead up to 11 points in La Liga with a 2-0 victory over 10-man Atletico Madrid on Sunday evening and are many people’s favourites to go all the way in Europe’s elite club cup competition again this season. The bookies have Barcelona at evens to win on Wednesday night.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been speaking to the press in his pre-match press conference ahead of tomorrow’s game and has given a team and injury update.
The boss was able to confirm that Antonio Valencia and Eric Bailly have been ruled out through injury, whilst Alexis Sanchez won’t be fit in time to face Barcelona. Neither have featured for us for a while as a result.
Ole is also concerned over the fitness of Nemanja Matic, Ander Herrera and Marcus Rashford. None of the trio took place in our defeat to Wolves last Tuesday and all three missed today’s training session.
However, the Norwegian has suggested that Matic could be fit in time to face the Spanish giants. He told MUTV:
“We still hope maybe that Nemanja can be ready, but Ander is probably out.”
“Antonio [Valencia] and Eric [Bailly] are definitely out.”
Solskjaer also gave an update on Marcus Rashford:
“He needed an extra warm-up and hopefully he won’t get a reaction.”
“He joined parts of it at the end, but he couldn’t join in the boxes, which is the fun part of training. Let’s see tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll be ready.”
Alexis Sanchez returned to training today after missing our last five matches. The Barcelona clash will come too soon for the Chilean but Ole is confident he’ll be in the squad to face West Ham United on Saturday. He added:
“Today was his first training session today with the team.”
“He has done lots of work and is now injury free. Now he’ll step up and train with the team. He will probably be in the squad for the West Ham game on Saturday and let’s see how much, and if he plays. But he’s not going to be able to join in tomorrow.”
Ousmane Dembele is the only notable absentee for the visitors.
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