Manchester United had originally planned on resuming training on today, but that’s impossible now due to new national guidelines enacted to try and stop the spread of COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic has brought all of world football down for the foreseeable future.
That’s said, there is still plenty of interesting Manchester United related news and notes to go over. Let’s take a look at some of the news items trending in cyberspace right now during these very strange days and extremely uncertain times.
Striker Odion Ighalo, on loan from Shanghai Shenhua in the Chinese Super League, has stepped up admirably to fill the void while leading scorer Marcus Rashford is out injured for the rest of the season.
Ighalo has done enough, and more to earn himself a permanent move to his dream club, and he was more than happy to take a massive pay cut in order to join the team. He’s willing to take another huge pay cut, to the tune of £6 million ($7.6m) in order to stay with United once his loan move expires at the end of the season.
The Daily Mail has more at this link. Elsewhere, defender Axel Tuanzebe, who has missed large portions of this season due to injury, gave a revealing interview to United’s Box to Box podcast, you can access that below:
"I'm happy to see the fans show me support and love — it's really touching for me."
Axel was feeling the love in the latest episode of Box to Box, powered by @HCLTech ?? pic.twitter.com/FhRoFrHPtR
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) March 17, 2020
Moving on, ICYMI, and judging by the page views numbers you did, midfielder Nemanja Matic is set to be given a contract extension. The club option, for one additional year, is set to be triggered.
Finally, midfielder Bruno Fernandes, the reigning club and Premier League player of the month for February (he’s also won four man of the match awards in nine appearances), has previously said that Cristiano Ronaldo inspired him to join United. Four Four Two has a story today on what Bruno’s idol, CR7, told him when they met in person.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.