Wednesday night at FC Basel will likely see Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho rotate a few players from this weekend’s league victory over Newcastle United. Fixture congestion is coming up, and the festive period will be here before you know it, so this UEFA Champions League clash means a chance to rest some players for the major workload ahead.
Mourinho will likely still field a very strong side for this one, as the Red Devils need just the one additional point to officially book passage into the tournament’s knockout round. Here is the link to our Man United starting XI prediction.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is back in action, but unlikely to start just yet. With Paul Pogba and Marcos Rojo also back, the only injury concerns are Phil Jones, Eric Bailly and Michael Carrick. Bailly missed his side’s thrashing of the Magpies due to an injury suffered before the game. Little else is known of his status at this point, but we could possibly learn more tomorrow during the pre-match news conference. Midfielder and club captain Michael Carrick remains a long term absentee, while the status of Jones is still questionable.
Mourinho completely lashed out at the England Football Association medical staff over how they treated his central defender and you can read that over at this link.
Champions League odds: Man Utd 21/20, draw 13/5, FC Basel 10/3
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Sound Cloud, LinkedIn and YouTube.