Wayne Rooney will play for Manchester United’s under-21s against Middlesbrough on Monday evening as the striker steps up his recovery from a knee injury.
The 30-year-old suffered the problem in a 2-1 defeat at Sunderland on February 13th and will be selected by Louis van Gaal for the reserves, having now trained twice with the first-team squad.
Rooney’s absence for Sunday’s trip to Tottenham Hotspur means he will miss a 12th match but the manager said of his recovery: “It’s going very well, he has trained with the group two times, it’s not too much, so he has to build up his capacity in the 21s.”
With Antonio Valencia, Phil Jones and Ashley Young all returning to full fitness recently, Van Gaal welcomed having more players to choose from.
“It makes my job more easy because I can select better but it makes the time for my players a little bit more difficult,” he said. “There was a time when I could select only the fit players but now with all the youngsters who have proven they are capable of playing and all those coming back I have a bigger squad.”
United are in fifth, nine points behind second-placed Tottenham. Yet United’s record against the other teams in the top seven is particularly good, losing only once, drawing three times and winning five times, to claim 18 points of the 27 available thus far. United are less successful against other sides and Van Gaal offered an explanation.
“I think it’s a very intelligent question,” the Dutchman said. “I have said a lot of times we need creative players, more fast players, quick-thinking players. Lower teams are mostly parking the bus and that is more difficult.
“Top teams want to play against us and then we can play also. That’s the big difference. I analyse it that way.”
Meanwhile, Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson’s hopes of competing at the European Championship have been dealt a severe blow after he was ruled out for six to eight weeks with a knee ligament injury.
Prognosis
The prognosis means Liverpool will be without the midfielder for the rest of the season even in the event of Jürgen Klopp’s team reaching the Europa League final on May 18th.
The England international damaged his knee when landing awkwardly in the first half of Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Borussia Dortmund and underwent a scan in Merseyside yesterday. The results allayed concerns of a cruciate ligament injury but revealed damage to the lateral collateral ligament, which can result in a three-month lay-off.
Encouragingly for Henderson, however, the scan showed the injury to his LCL is isolated. That gives the 25-year-old hope of recovering within six to eight weeks but leaves him struggling to prove his match fitness to Roy Hodgson before Euro 2016.
The England manager is due to name his 23-man squad for the tournament on May 12th and has declared a reluctance to include players who are not match fit. Guardian Service
