Erik ten Hag says Casemiro faces a battle against time to be fit for the Manchester derby on Sunday.
Speaking at the pre-match press conference ahead of the game, the manager also confirmed the return to training of a key defender.
“Aaron [Wan-Bissaka] was training today, Casa is a race against the clock, not 100%,” the manager said.
Ten Hag was asked about Marcus Rashford’s form, including his goalscoring. Last season’s top scorer has netted only once this time around.
“If you give him the trust and play him every game, most games he finishes the game. I have strong belief he will return to scoring a lot of goals,” Ten Hag responded.
On his team’s ability to score goals in general, he said:
“The cooperation has to click, but we showed this week some examples where there are so many we have overload positions, going in overload position to the opponent’s goal and we don’t net or don’t even hit the target.
“We don’t have time to train this, we give some coaching and I’m convinced with the quality from our players that they will go and score more goals.”
The manager was also asked about the progress of new goalkeeper Andre Onana after making some high-profile errors in previous weeks.
“He has high expectations from himself,” he said. “We give him the confidence, look what you did in the past for great clubs in great leagues, you have the ability and the skills. The last two games were good progress, now we have to keep this going. It’s very good but at Manchester United good is not good enough.”
Speaking on reports that Alejandro Garnacho could be in trouble with the FA for using emojis on a tweet about Andre Onana that could be perceived as racist, the boss said:
“Not [concerned] in this moment. We are talking with the FA. I can confirm that and want to emphasise we are together, we are United and you see that in the post of Andre Onana.”
On tomorrow’s game, Ten Hag commented “I think it’s a match that is so huge because it’s Manchester, it’s internal, but it’s also about world football. All the eyes will be on this game globally.
“In this moment they’re six points ahead, we’re six points back, we have to catch up. We know we have to progress the team, make developments. It has to do with the cooperation, the movement around it, we have to work on that.”