Wayne Rooney will play for Manchester United’s Under-21s against Middlesbrough on Monday evening as the striker steps up his recovery from a knee injury.
The 30-year-old suffered the problem in a 2-1 defeat at Sunderland on 13 February and will be selected by Louis van Gaal for the reserves, having now trained twice with the first-team squad.
Rooney’s absence for the trip to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday means he will miss a 12th match but the United manager said of his recovery: “It’s going very well, he has trained with the group two times, it’s not too much, so he has to build up his capacity in the 21s.”
Van Gaal has recently had Antonio Valencia, Phil Jones and Ashley Young all return to full fitness and with Rooney also soon to be available again, the manager welcomed having more players from which to choose. “It makes my job more easy because I can select better but it makes the time for my players a little bit more difficult,” Van Gaal said.
“There was a time when I could select only the fit players but now with all the youngsters who have proven they are capable of playing and all those coming back I have a bigger squad.”
United are in fifth, nine points behind second-placed Tottenham. Yet United’s record against the other teams in the top seven is particularly good, losing only once, drawing three times and winning five times, to claim 18 points of the 27 available thus far. United are less successful against the lower-placed teams and Van Gaal offered an explanation.
“I think it’s a very intelligent question,” the Dutchman said. “I have said a lot of times we need creative players, more fast players, quick-thinking players. Lower teams are mostly parking the bus and that is more difficult. Top teams want to play against us and then we can play also. That’s the big difference. I analyse it that way.”
Of why Leicester City are the leaders he said: “Leicester play always in the same way, they are organised very good defensively, they play directly with counter attacks, I think it is always more easy to do that. Everybody accepts that of Leicester City but they do it fantastically.
“I like they play because they play like a team and the players take a lot of responsibility. They have a lot of energy in the games and also [Claudio] Ranieri, the man who selects the players, has done great work.”
