Manchester United have just announced that their captain joined the unfortunate list of injured players who are not traveling to face Midtjylland in what is a vital confrontation for the club. Wayne Rooney who will be out for at least six weeks recently stated that the chances to make it to next year’s Champions League directly from the Premier League table are very low. “It’ll be difficult to quality for the Champions League in the top four now. We know that. It’s a sad day for us. We have to somehow move on” Rooney said. That leaves the Europa League as the only option to get a spot in the 2016-2017 season of the most important inter-club competition in the world. It looks like the England international suffered an injury during practice as there was no sign of him being in any pain whatsoever after the Sunderland game. Regardless, the 30-year-old is expected to return at the end of March. It`s one of the worst moments for him to become unavailable as he was just starting to score. According to the Mirror, there is no public info regarding what caused the injury. It is known though that it affected the striker’s knee and that means he will miss a very important double clash against Danish side FC Midtjylland.
There is a big problem with the captain’s return though. If first impressions are right regarding his injury, he should be fit right before the all-important match against Man City followed by the Everton game. If that is true, Rooney could be at risk of missing EURO 2016 if he gets injured again in United’s pursuit of the Champions League from 4th place in the Premier League. Recoveries rarely happen as expected and the estimate given at the start often doesn’t match the end-result. Sure, 6 weeks should be enough for Rooney to recover but will he be 100% recovered?
Here are the players who are unavailable and will probably be missing out on all the games that will take place in February:
Wayne Rooney – return date – End of March
Bastian Schweinsteiger – return unknown
Ashley Young – return unknown
Antonio Valencia – return – End of February
Luke Shaw – return unknown
Marcos Rojo – return unknown
Cameron Borthwick-Jackson – return unknown
Matteo Darmian – return – Mid-March
Adnan Januzaj – return – end of February
BREAKING NEWS – NIGHTMARE AS DAVID DE GEA SUSTAINED KNEE INJURY IN WARM-UP AND HAD TO BE REPLACED BY SERGIO ROMERO