Erik ten Hag says he won’t “take risks” with players ahead of the Community Shield against Man City and suggested it may take time to get going when the Premier League season starts.
Fans don’t want to hear warning of a slow start to the season – a week before the 2024/25 Premier League campaign gets underway, but the manager is simply being realistic because he hasn’t had a lot of time with his players over the summer.
The international tournaments didn’t help United, but we aren’t the only Premier League club in that boat.
“I can see this because we didn’t have time together,” Ten Hag told reporters on Thursday, as quoted by ESPN.
“We have to work on our game model to find the patterns. It was a break, they all played Euros, Copa America so they were in different teams, with different game models and different patterns.
“Now we have to bring this together. It is complicated. I am not the only one who has to deal with this problem but there are also teams with less international players, they can make a proper preseason so they are probably ahead of us. We have to deal with this in the coming weeks without dropping points.”
Ten Hag lost new signing Leny Yoro as well as Rasmus Hojlund to injuries on pre-season tour. To make matters worse, we are without several defenders for the Community Shield at Wembley.
However, Ten Hag said he’s not prepared to risk more injuries in an attempt to win the Community Shield, which is a glorified friendly.
“The FA Cup was a higher occasion than the game on Saturday. Nevertheless, we want to win but we showed on occasions we can beat City.
“We have that belief but we don’t want to take a risk with players and lose them for long periods because that is what we have to take from last season because when you are getting in a pattern when we are missing many players with injuries from the same team unit that affects the results.
“We want to get results and for that players have to be available.”
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