Eric Bailly, Marcus Rashford & Jesse Lingard Manchester United Man United
Man United Eric Bailly, Marcus Rashford & Jesse Lingard

Man United take on Crystal Palace in their 2020/21 season opener this weekend at Old Trafford and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer might not be naming his best XI.

The Red Devils have been given one more weeks’ rest due to their European endeavours but a number of their players have reported back to training only about a week ago.

So clearly a lot of the Man United players are not physically a 100% fit to play the full 90 minutes vs Palace which is why Ole Gunnar Solksjaer might have to depend on using some of his fringe players on Saturday.

He said in his press conference: “The players are at different stages,”

“Mentally, I think everyone’s ready. Physically, they’re at a different stage, some of them have played more games than others. So we’ll have to be clever and good about when to play players because we know this period now, until the first international, is a hugely important one.

“We need points and the players need games but some of them haven’t trained enough or had enough football. Some of them have been in quarantine, it’s just one of these situations which we’ve adapted to really well before and the players have done well.

“We’re as ready as we can be. We’ve had a strange pre-season. We’ve had players away on internationals, we’ve had some players working here and some players are just getting back fit, so it’s been a strange pre-season, but it’s been a good one for the ones who have been working hard.

“We played in the Europa League until 16 or 17 August, round about a month ago, so that will stand us in good stead. That was almost like our pre-season.”

The likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool have all started their respective campaigns with a win so it’s important that Man United also pick up all three points this weekend.

Yes, there might be some rotation during the second half of the season but thankfully Man United have no major injury concerns which should be mean that Solskjaer will name the likes of Pogba, Van de Beek and Rashford in the starting line-up.

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Read: 4-2-3-1 Man United’s predicted XI vs Palace.