Last week Manchester United Manager Jose Mourinho said that there will be absolutely no playing time for the players who are out the door. The Portugese boss was hard liner in regards to the preseason. Speaking to MUTV after the 5-2 win over Galatasaray in Gothenburg, Mourinho was asked about players who featured and whether or not they had conveyed enough to be part of Mourinho’s long term master plan.
He replied candidly: “Well, if they were not in my plans, I would not give them one single minute. I wouldn’t keep them in my squad.”
However, once the Premier League regular season starts, and then later the additional domestic tournaments and European competition, playing time will open up. Those fringe players, the extremely marginalized, will get their time on the pitch.
So there you go, a light at the end of the tunnel for those United players who are far down the pecking order.
Mourinho told MUTV: “I’m really happy [with my squad]. It’s the first time I’ve worked with such a number of players because I’m used to working with 20 plus the keepers.
“We have, in the squad, 23 plus the keepers — and even so we had to make decisions and let some players go on loan, and try to sell others.
“But this group of 23 is a great group and I think in this moment — and I told them this — there is a little bit of frustration for the ones that I have not selected.
“They work hard to be in the match and they aren’t, and this is going to happen because we have just one Premier League match.
“But in September the Capital One Cup starts, the Europa League starts, we start playing three matches a week and then everybody is involved and the squad is good.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
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