Harry Diamond
Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has rubbished reports that Alexis Sanchez has been banished from the first-team.
Sanchez has been linked with a move away from Old Trafford this summer, with The Sun making wild claims earlier this week (yes, we’re shocked too) that the Chilean had been sent to train with the club’s reserve side, having failed to establish himself in Solskjaer’s plans for the new season.
Unsurprisingly, the Manchester United boss has now confirmed what we here at The Football Faithful had suspected all along, that the report was pure nonsense, saying that the 30-year-old is working hard as he nears a return to first-team football.
“Alexis is a professional and he wants to be part of this club,” Solskjaer said during his Friday press conference.
“He hasn’t been put in the reserves, of course he hasn’t .
“He’s a very good player and he’s a few weeks behind the rest but is very close to being part of it.
“We don’t have the biggest forward line and he may end up playing a lot more games than you expect. We expect him to come good and he has quality.
“We’ve had a behind closed doors game and he’s training and doing extras and it’ll be a case of gradually integrating him into more and more playing time, but we’ll have more behind closed doors games, because with one game a week now its hard to keep everyone ticking, so we’re arranging a few of them”
Solskjaer hoping to see Manchester United’s ‘resilience’ and ‘robustness’ against Wolves
See also – The five most successful clubs in English football history