Manchester United have played two games under Ralf Rangnick so far and have managed to win one and draw another.
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Manchester United’s European commitments will be put on hold for a couple of months now, as the Red Devils ended their final Champions League group match against Young Boys with a 1-1 draw. Having already qualified for the knockout rounds as group winners, interim manager Ralf Rangnick had the luxury to completely rotate the squad for the mid-week fixture at Old Trafford. With no European action till February, Rangnick can fully focus on domestic football for the immediate future. The mid-week draw was the German’s second match in-charge of the club after overseeing a 1-0 win in his first game against Crystal Palace last weekend. Next up is a trip to Carrow Road to take on Dean Smith’s Norwich City in the Premier League.
Ahead of Saturday’s clash with the Canaries, Ralf Rangnick was asked about the possible transfer business in January. In Friday’s pre-match press conference, the German said, “I’ve got to know them better obviously in this week, I saw most of them play in the two games and had minimum three or four or five training sessions but it’s still too early to speak about what might happen in the winter transfer window. If I look at the number of players we have it’s still a big squad, we definitely do not have not enough players but we also need to make sure that players want to stay here, if they’re not getting enough game time here, it might make sense to speak individually with the players and see if a loan deal might make sense but right now it’s too early to speak about that.”
On Wednesday night, Ralf Rangnick completely changed the Manchester United players in the starting line-up for the Champions League clash against Young Boys. This would have allowed a much-needed rest for those players who were part of last weekend’s clash against Crystal Palace.
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“We trained in two different groups before the game on Wednesday. We trained with the team against Young Boys in detail to prepare them for the game. The other group that played against [Crystal] Palace, they had a day off on Tuesday and started to prepare for the game tomorrow on Wednesday, Thursday and obviously today was the last day of preparation of the game,” he explained.
The manager then gave an update on the injury situation surrounding his team. “We have two or three question marks behind players, but since they haven’t shown up as yet, we only train at two o’clock, we have to wait until after the training session, or at least before the training session, and the doctor and medical department can tell me what the current situation is like,” Ralf Rangnick explained.
“Aaron (Wan-Bissaka), as you said, received one or two knocks in the game, there is still a question mark behind Nemanja Matic, he had sort of a cold, I wouldn’t call it a ‘flu but he was negatively tested with COVID, so I am still hoping he can be available, but we have to wait until we see how he feels today.”
Ralf Rangnick also revealed that he had a phone call with Paul Pogba recently and also provided an update on his injury scenario. “We spoke on the phone two days ago, no I think it was on Tuesday… He’s still in Dubai and is due to come back today and then we’ll get to know each other in person on Sunday but we had a telephone call for about 10-15 minutes. He told me that he was getting better but obviously not being fully fit,” he added.
“From what I’ve heard so far, it’ll take another couple of weeks until he’s fit for training again. Then, of course, he has been out for quite some time. I suppose it will take him another couple of weeks to get him match fit but in the first instance it’s important for him to become fully fit, to be able to train with the rest of the group and then we have to develop him physically and tactically to be also fit to play in the Premier League.”
