Wayne Rooney has missed Manchester United’s last four games with injury and Jose Mourinho has confirmed the captain will not return for tomorrow’s game against St Etienne.

While Rooney will certainly miss the Europa League fixture, Mourinho has said it is yet unknown whether he will recover in time to play in the League Cup final against Southampton on Sunday.

I don’t know. It was the first time he trained and he didn’t even train 100 per cent with the group,” the manager told reporters. You saw the first 15 minutes open to the press and yes, he was doing the warming up and the basic things after warming up, but then when the training session was high in intensity, he was not training. So he has no chance for tomorrow, he’s not here, he stayed back training, and let’s see for the weekend.

He is injured, I cannot do miracles at that level. We have made great improvements with the medical department and getting players back into competition. That is a clear improvement, it is easy to see with data in that area. But Rooney is injured, he is [has been] injured for two or three weeks. When you don’t have a player, you have others. The team is in a good moment. In the past few months we’ve lost only one game and it was one we could lose as it was a two-legged match.