Kobbie Mainoo has been ruled out of Sunday’s Premier League clash between Aston Villa and Manchester United, with Ruben Amorim addressing the unsettled midfielder’s absence
Ruben Amorim has revealed that Kobbie Mainoo has sustained a calf injury. Mainoo is missing from Manchester United’s squad to take on Aston Villa on Sunday, and the timing couldn’t be worse for the midfielder.
With Casemiro ruled out through suspension, the door was wide open for Mainoo to potentially earn his first league start of the season, but the youngster suffered the setback during training.
Speaking before kick-off at Villa Park, Amorim told Sky Sports: “He [Mainoo] went to the doctor. He got something in his calf. We are going to assess but he is out of this game. He is going to be fine in the few weeks, I think, I don’t know. Let’s focus on the players that we have and are ready to play.”
When pressed on whether Mainoo would have been in the starting lineup, Amorim replied: “I prefer not to say, not just because of the player who is going to play this evening. Now it is easy to say… he knows, and that is enough.”
Casemiro, Harry Maguire, Matthijs de Ligt, Bryan Mbeumo, Amad and Noussair Mazraoui are all unavailable, seeing Amorim call up four academy players to the bench.
Bendito Mantato has been named in a Premier League squad for the first time. “You win experience by playing and training with the first team,” Amorim explained.
“So it’s a big opportunity for everyone and if I need some of them, they will be ready. And we are going to help them to help the team.
“Even with all the players, all the squad, it would be a really tough match. They are in a very good moment, but we are also prepared for anything. And we proved that maybe in the tougher matches we can step up, and today we want to do that.”
Amorim went on: “We need to try to put the players in different places with different characteristics, but it’s not going to change too much because we have a way of playing, we are attacking really well, we need to defend better so we will try to do that with different characteristics.
“We know that we could stay six or seven games without them [Mbeumo, Amad and Mazraoui] so the other players need to be ready.”
United could climb to fifth in the Premier League table with victory over Villa this afternoon.