PREMIER LEAGUE
Why aren’t Rashford or Garnacho playing for Man United against Man City in the Premier League?
Both players were excluded from Ruben Amorim’s 20-man squad for this evening’s Manchester derby, despite not being injured.
There were two surprising omissions from the team sheet for this evening’s Manchester derby at the Etihad - neither Alejandro Garnacho nor Marcus Rashford featured in Manchester United’s starting XI against City, and stranger still, nor were they on the bench.
Garnacho is United’s top scorer this season with eight goals and Rashford is just behind with seven, level with Rasmus Højlund. Neither player is carrying an injury - in fact both played in Thursday’s Europe League victory at Viktoria Plzen (the Argentinean came on as a sub for the last 10 minutes), so it appears the decision was ‘technical’.
“No message” to United pair left out in the cold
Manager Ruben Amorim was asked why the two forwards had been omitted before the game and replied. “I don’t want to send a message. It’s simply an evaluation, and they know it,“ the Portuguese coach told Sky. “The players are really, really smart. Everybody understands my decision. I have to choose. It’s just simple selection.
“The context is difficult,” he continued. “We have to win games and we have a difficult situation. I pay attention to everything, the way you eat, the way you put on your clothes to go the game... Everything. I make my evaluation and then I have to decide. I have a lot of players to choose. There’s a communication after the last training which goes to the WhatsApp. They receive the information. But they are alright. They had training this morning, I was there. Everything was OK. They trained really well”.
From what Amorim said, and considering the derby is such a huge game, we can only deduce that Rashford or Garnacho have been left out due to other issues - according to some reports, as punishment for attitude problems.
The Manchester Evening News report that the decision to leave Garnacho out is not related to the rumors doing the rounds that he was in some way involved in leaking the team lists to the press.