Manchester United were without Lisandro Mart\u00ednez for the visit to Everton after the centre back was ruled out with a suspected calf injury, according to The Athletic. Mart\u00ednez had started the club\u2019s previous 10 fixtures across all competitions after winning a long-running selection battle with Amorim and his subsequent successors.<\/p>\n
The absence of Mart\u00ednez follows a lengthy ACL layoff earlier in his career. Muscle problems after such extended recoveries are common and, per the same report, Mart\u00ednez is expected to miss “one or two weeks.” Given the current gaps in the schedule, Michael Carrick will not be without his influential defender for long if that timetable holds.<\/p>\n
That medical update forced changes to the matchday selection. United lined up in a 4-2-3-1 with Senne Lammens in goal; Diogo Dalot, Leny Yoro, Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw across the back four; Casemiro and Kobbie Mainoo in midfield; Amad Diallo, Bruno Fernandes and Matheus Cunha behind Bryan Mbeumo.<\/p>\n
Substitutes named were Atlay Bay\u0131nd\u0131r (GK), Ayden Heaven, Tyrell Malacia, Noussair Mazraoui, Jack Moorhouse, Manuel Ugarte, Tyler Fletcher, Joshua Zirkzee and Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko.<\/p>\n
Mart\u00ednez\u2019s left-footed passing and the angles he creates from the left of the defence are highlighted as valuable to the side. His absence provides an opportunity for Leny Yoro, but it seems likely Harry Maguire will shift across to the left-hand side of the centre-back pairing in the short term. Maguire occupied that position earlier in his career, though Erik ten Hag previously expressed concerns: \u201cThe angles are not good for Harry if he is playing on the left side,\u201d the Dutch boss fretted, \u201cit\u2019s difficult for him also defending in wide areas on his left foot but I think he is more capable on the right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fixture notes list the immediate matches affected: Feb. 23 v Everton (A), March 1 v Crystal Palace (H), March 4 v Newcastle (A) and March 15 v Aston Villa (H).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lisandro Martinez misses Everton trip with suspected calf injury; expected out for one to two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[687,179,969],"tags":[1073,538,1393],"class_list":["post-7066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everton","category-manchester-united","category-premier-league","tag-acl-injury","tag-amad-diallo","tag-centre-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7066","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=7066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}