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FITNESS FIRST FOR REDS AT WEMBLEY
Sir Alex Ferguson has a number of injuries to contend with ahead of Sunday’s Community Shield showdown with Chelsea. But otherwise his Reds squad is nearing full fitness for the start of the season, and the United boss will use the game to enhance his men's match sharpness.
Rio Ferdinand, Anderson, Owen Hargreaves, Michael Carrick, Gabriel Obertan, Rafael and Fabio are all either out or doubts for the Wembley curtain-raiser.
"Rio is still well behind," said Sir Alex at his first press conference of the new season at Carrington. "It’ll be a few weeks before he is back among us. Anderson is making good progress and he will be training in two weeks."
Hargreaves is still in America continuing his return from tendonitis in his knees, while Carrick and Obertan are recovering from ankle injuries. "Michael’s injury is nothing serious but he’ll be out for two weeks," added the boss.
Rafael and Fabio are doubtful for the game as they have both been suffering from food poisoning. But two players definitely earmarked to play are Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen. They both played 45 minutes against an Airtricity League XI in Dublin, and Sir Alex will give both men at least another half this weekend.
"We'll use Sunday's game as we always do," the boss concluded, "as a mechanism to get players further down the line in terms of fitness."
More: No rush for World Cup Reds | Focus turns to Wembley | Ready to go again
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NANI READY FOR EARLY TEST
The Portuguese winger told the official Community Shield programme that he's desperate for United to get off to a good start at Wembley... Sunday is a great opportunity to get the campaign off to a really good start. It’s always a test whenever you play Chelsea but we’re looking forward to it. We had a tough battle with them in the league last season and it was disappointing to lose out. But if we win on Sunday it will give us a lot of confidence going into the new season. The match gives a chance for us to test ourselves against a very good team, help improve our fitness and win a trophy. When you play for Manchester United you want to win every match no matter what and this game is particularly important because it’s against one of our biggest rivals. It’ll be a hard game but the mentality of the players at this club is always to win. Both sides know each other so well and all the players are very familiar with each other. But every game is different and we know we’ll have to work hard to win the match. Chelsea have a lot of good players who are difficult to play against. We just need to make sure we keep our concentration and focus on playing well and doing our best. I was really happy with my goal against Chelsea in last season’s Community Shield. Even though we lost the game and I picked up an injury, I was pleased with my performance and it felt good to score at Wembley. | | | | | |  |
Q&A: BRIAN McCLAIR
The best under-15s players in the world are at Carrington this week to contest the Manchester United Premier Cup. Red View spoke to Academy manager Brian McClair about the tournament and youth football development at United...
What’s the most important thing to consider when you’re working with young players?
The emphasis, right from the very beginning when you come into the United environment at the development centres at six years of age, is that it’s fun. In that fun environment we believe players are more attentive and they will learn quicker. All the emphasis early on is learning skills. That changes as they go through the years but at the very beginning it’s skills and technical stuff.
How important is coming to a tournament like this for a team from, say, Malaysia?
Oh, you can’t beat this. If we had a choice in how we develop young players in this country, we would play in tournaments all the time, all over the world. We want to educate young players for the way the game is now – you only have to look at Manchester United’s first team to see how many players come from different countries. We want young players to have the experience of playing against different nationalities.
Some of the players who’ve taken part in this tournament for United before – like Tom Cleverley (2004) – are now on the verge of making it in the first team. Do you think this tournament can help the home-grown players?
It helps everybody. Even if you have a negative experience, i.e. you lose a few games, it’s a world-class tournament with world-class players, so it gives you a measure of where you are in your age-group, a measure that players wouldn’t have had in the past. Recently I was speaking to Clayton Blackmore, who had a long and distinguished professional career and spent a lot of time at Manchester United. When he was at this club at 15, they were playing non-league teams like Chorley. Our 15-year-olds now are playing against teams from all over the world.
What advice would you give to young players who don’t have the best experience at this tournament ?
In order to be successful, you have to have bad times, so you can look back and think, "I'm now doing better than that." You have to have negative moments to give you something to reflect on, something to focus on when you are doing quite well.
More: Read more from McClair on ManUtd.com | MUPC 2010 live blog | Visit the official MUPC website
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