The German is looking forward to his first experience as a manager in the world’s oldest cup competition.
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Manchester United interim manager Ralf Rangnick has promised to play his “best possible team” in the Emirates FA Cup third-round tie against Aston Villa. The German is looking forward to his first experience as a manager in the world’s oldest cup competition. United are heading into the clash on the back of a disappointing 0-1 defeat against Wolves in the Premier League last week. Since that loss, the team has had a whole week to prepare for this clash without any midweek commitments. In a pre-match interview with club media, Rangnick was asked has it helped to have at least a few more training sessions this week, without a midweek game.
“Yes, we’ve had two training sessions already, today [Friday] and yesterday, we’ll have another two tomorrow [Saturday] and the day after tomorrow [Sunday] and then hopefully be ready for that kind of football. We must make sure that we play in a way, in a style, in an energetic performance, that we have the fans behind us, that they play as if they were the 12th player on the pitch. In order to achieve that, we have to play that way, we cannot expect from the fans that they do that automatically. They do that automatically at Old Trafford, but to keep that going for 90 to 95 minutes, we have to do our part,” he stated.
“We will definitely not play with eight or nine different players, or even 10, as we did against Young Boys in the Champions League. We will try to play with the best possible team, with a strong team. There might be a few changes but I haven’t taken the final decisions yet myself but we will definitely try to play this game as if it was a normal Premier League or Champions League game.”
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Rangnik then provided an update on the team news situation, starting with the centre-backs. “Victor is back in training, since yesterday, which is very good news for us. Harry hasn’t been able to train, as yet, and we have to wait and see how this develops, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. With Harry, there is still a question mark but Victor will definitely be available for the game on Monday,” he explained.
Asked about Paul Pogba, he replied, “As far as I know, I was told a week ago it would be a minimum of at least another four or five weeks before he is fit for training again. I saw him this morning before the training session, he was in the locker room, and I hope he will be back as soon as possible. Right now, he’s not been part of the training group and even if he was back whenever, two, three or four weeks, it will take some time. It’s one thing to be training fit but, on the other hand, he needs to be fit for the match and competition in either the Premier League or the Champions League and this will still take some time.”
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