It has been reported that Michael Carrick hasn’t trained for the past few days due to illness, meaning United could be playing Sunderland with a squad down to the bare bones, again.
Carrick has been our most important player this season so his absence could be costly. Tom Cleverley has barely played this season because of injury but after a few substitute appearances recently may get called back in to the starting XI. Anderson and Darren Fletcher are obviously unavailable, which would mean we had a choice of Giggs, Scholes and even Park to play in the centre of the park.
However, Carrick was seen arriving and leaving Carrington yesterday, so maybe there is some hope for him.
With Nemanja Vidic, Chris Smalling and Jonny Evans injured, we are going to be struggling to put a back four together. Rio Ferdinand was substituted off with injury last weekend against Swansea, which could make the situation even worse. The best case scenario would be Rafael, Jones, Rio and Evra as our back four.
Up front, Danny Welbeck is still carrying the injury from the City game, meaning Rooney is likely to start up front with Chicharito.
This obviously isn’t the ideal preparation to the biggest game of the season. If you look at the injury table Manchester United are at the top with 10 injuries whilst Manchester City are at the bottom with 0. This has been the case all season.
Roll on tomorrow…
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