Antonio Valencia has suffered a “setback” in training otherwise he would have been in the squad to travel down to Fulham this weekend, according to Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Since the Norwegian took over at Old Trafford on an interim basis, Valencia has only featured in one of his ten matchday squads, however he has only started in a Premier League match once in the last four months.
United have a one-year option to extend his contract – which runs out at the end of the season – and they must trigger it next month if they want him to stay.
A lack of form and injury issues have meant he has been watching much of the season from the sidelines but Solskjaer hopes to have his captain back in a couple of weeks.
“Well hopefully he’ll recover,” Solskjaer said of Valencia. “Because he’s been training hard, really hard. Then he got a setback, so hopefully in a couple of weeks he’ll be back with us, he’s been a fantastic servant for the club, he’s captain for a reason.
“So hopefully we can get him back on the pitch. But it was hard when he broke down, he would’ve travelled now this weekend.”
And Solskjaer gave a full update on team news to MUTV ahead of the clash against Claudio Ranieri’s men.
He said: “[Marcos] Rojo has been training for a few days, so he’s back in training. But we’ve lost Antonio and Matteo [Darmian] through niggles for a couple of weeks.
“We’re still not bad. We’ve got 20-21 players training every day, so that’s good.”