Heading into the Saturday fixture against Burnley, Manchester United have a few injuries to deal with. The fitness question came up actually at his weekly press briefing.
The Republik of Mancunia has a full transcript of the entire session, which you can read at this link.
Question: “How’s the squad at the moment, fitness wise? Rooney, Martial and Smalling were not in the squad on Wednesday and there’s been lots of questions about Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Can you clear up what’s happening with him? Is he fit? There’s a lot of speculation.”
Mourinho: “He’s not injured. Sometimes I confuse the meaning fit in the English language because fit, sometimes you have the view, if you are not injured, and sometimes fit if you are in great condition and ready to compete. That’s a different thing for me. In Portuguese we use different words for the different situations.
“Mkhitaryan is not injured. He is training with the team, 100%, without any limitation in terms of his fitness related.”
The full YouTube of the entire Mourinho media session can be found at this link. We already covered the Mkhitaryan issue in full detail over at this link.
Ok, so Mourinho totally dodged the question about Wayne Rooney, Anthony Martial and Chris Smalling. Well, we left all of them out of our Man United Starting XI prediction anyway. According to Odds Checker, United are a huge favorite. It’s mostly 2/9 or 1/5 for a United victory. Odds for a draw are about 6/1 or 11/2. For a Burnley victory, we’re seeing 12, 14, 16, even 20/1. So it’s still wide open.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
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