Patrick Rees
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has confirmed that the club’s latest acquisition, Alexis Sanchez is in the line to make his first appearance for the club as he has been included in the squad for Manchester United’s trip to face Yeovil Town in the FA Cup.
Alexis Sanchez completed his move to Manchester United this week in a straight swap deal which saw Henrikh Mkhitaryan move the other way. Signing a four-and-a-half-year deal worth £14m-a-year (after tax) with the Red Devils, the Chilean’s arrival was announced in an epic way by the club.
It seems like the former Barcelona man could well make his first Manchester United appearance when the Red Devils face Yeovil Town in the 4th round of the FA Cup at the Huish Park. In his pre-match press conference, Mourinho, who celebrates his birthday today, was asked whether our No.7 will be a part of his squad, to which he replied (quoted by Metro),
“Yeah. You know, because he’s in England for quite a long time, I think everybody knows the player he is,” the Portuguese said. I think everybody knows what he did at Arsenal.
“I try not to speak what he did before in Spain and Italy but in the Premier League, he has shown the quality he has. We got one of the best-attacking players in the world and he’s very important for us because we want the best possible players.”
Manchester United have already been knocked out of the EFL Cup and the FA Cup remains their only hope of winning a domestic silverware this season. Talking about his team selection, the Portuguese was quoted by Manchester United’s website as saying,
“We want to win,” Mourinho told reporters. “We know what cups are. Manchester United played a couple of years ago at Yeovil [in January 2015] and they know the difficulties they felt.
“So we have to go with a very strong team. We are going to rest a couple of players; we also have a couple of problems that we want to try to resolve, with problems for the next matches in February in the Premier League and also Champions League. But it will be a very strong team.”
With Jesse Lingard in such fine form, it will be interesting to see what kind of attacking flair United will possess tonight. Also, there are high possibilities that Scott McTominay will feature as well, but same cannot be said for Axel Tuanzebe as the youngster has completed his move to Aston Villa on loan for the rest of the season.
