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Manchester United head coach Ruben Amorim says he is likely to rest players ahead of his side’s trip to St. James Park to face Newcastle United on Sunday.
The pre-match press conference was held immediately following the Europa League tie against Lyon, with Amorim’s comments embargoed until now.
Asked to comment on the character Joshua Zirkzee has shown to recover from the previous encounter against Newcastle that saw him substituted after 33 minutes, Amorim replied:
“Yes, he is doing a great job but also a very important thing was the way the fans reacted after that incident.
“So if you see every time, if he’s not playing, if he gets on the pitch or just warming up, the fans sing the Josh song, so that is massive for the player.
“So it’s 50:50, on the part of the fans and on the part of Josh.”
Asked what he did himself to help Zirkzee, he said:
“The same thing, I explained the situation, because as a former player I want to hear some explanation sometimes from the coaches so I’m really open on that. I just want to help the team and then work with him, work with him as he’s improving and then put him in the team to play. That’s the best way to show confidence in him.”
The next question was whether he would rotate in the Premier League to save players for the Europa League.
“But there is a great responsibility and we don’t have a big squad of players to do that”, Amorim replied.
“But we have some players who I know cannot make 90 minutes at the moment so we have to be careful. So we will try to address all these subjects in the game against Newcastle.
“But we have a great responsibility when we play any game, but we will look at that for sure.”
Asked if there would be any players returning to the squad from injury, he said “No, I think it’s the same squad.”
He was then asked again about rotating, specifically with regard to the Magpies, given the form they are in.
“Sometimes the best way to prepare is to win and we have to be careful with some players, but we have to be competitive,” Amorim said. “But when you play for Manchester United you can’t go into a game thinking about the next one.
“So we are going to face this one and then we’ll have three days, we won’t have a lot of time to run and train, it’s just recovering, but we have to face Newcastle in the way we can win the game.”
He was then asked what he thinks the strengths are of Sunday’s opponents.
“Everything,” he responded. “They have top players, really good on set pieces, physicality, the way they run and recover when they are under pressure. They have played together for a while. They won a title that was really emotional for everybody, you could see it during that week.
“But we have to think about our team, the way we want to play this kind of game and we’re being more consistent in the way we try to play games, so we’ll try to do that on Sunday.”
Bruno Fernandes was the next topic, with Amorim being asked if he would consider resting the skipper on Sunday.
“It’s an evaluation we’ll make with all the staff, with all the data that we have. Because we know already the players, we’ll try to protect those who find it harder to play a lot of games.
“But Bruno Fernandes is playing all the time and is playing better all the time. Sometimes this kind of player has to play in every match. But we’ll address that in these days we have to prepare.”
Featured image Alex Livesey via Getty Images
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