Michael Carrick says Manchester United\u2019s squad have regained energy after an extended spell without competitive football and are ready for Monday\u2019s fixture against Leeds United.<\/p>\n
The club have not been involved in European competition this season and are no longer in this season\u2019s FA Cup, leaving them with a longer watching brief since the March international break. By the time United take to the Old Trafford pitch against Leeds, they will not have played a competitive match for three-and-a-half weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t wait,\u201d Carrick admitted to United\u2019s internal media . \u201cIt\u2019s been a strange couple of weeks for us and the boys that have been here, for some of the boys it has been normal going away on international break. It doesn\u2019t feel as big of a deal if you just look at it instead of going it\u2019s been 24 days in-between games as there has been a lot going on between it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say the lads have come back together this week and there has been a real nice freshness and a good feeling, an energetic, positive vibe going around, which is really good. We are definitely looking forward to it and it can\u2019t come quick enough now.\u201d<\/p>\n
United sit third in the Premier League on 55 points, ahead of Aston Villa by one point, Liverpool by three and Chelsea by seven. The landscape could change before kick-off: Villa travel to Nottingham Forest on Sunday and Chelsea play later the same day against Manchester City. If Villa and Chelsea win, the onus will be on United to take three points from their clash with Leeds.<\/p>\n
Midweek Champions League results mean a top-five finish in the table will be sufficient to secure entry to Europe\u2019s top competition, rather than the historical requirement of finishing in the top four. Against that backdrop, Carrick has emphasised the refreshed mood within his squad as they prepare to end an unusual 24-day gap between competitive matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carrick: United have used a long break to refresh, and the squad are eager for the Leeds match. Mon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-11567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}