Manchester United Women have another big test ahead of them on Saturday as they face Arsenal away in the WSL.
The Reds were going head to head with unbeaten league leaders until they dropped points against Chelsea earlier this month so they will be hoping to get back to winning ways against the North London club.
Yesterday Marc Skinner gave a promising update on the squad confirming that since the international break there have been no new injuries and he has a fully fit squad.
He confirmed that Ona Batlle and Lucia Garcia are fully recovered and even Aoife Mannion is back in training although he confirmed we won’t see her in a game until after Christmas.
He said, “Aoife still won’t be ready [to play until] after Christmas, I imagine, but she’s progressing nicely, she’s in training with the team, albeit modified slightly.”
Skinner went into detail about the difficulties the international break poses to training for a big game like this.
“It’s hard, you’ve got two sessions before we play. We’ve been working and dripping individual parts throughout the week, but I think Arsenal will be in the same boat. We both haven’t had our teams for longer than two days and we play pretty early,” he said.
“We’ve been trying to drip feed that [preparation] in, trying to educate away from the pitch, as well as on the pitch, because we’ll have literally two sessions. We know what we’re preparing for, we’re preparing for a very energetic, very lively, very good team that we’ve got to stop them playing and exploit them with the ball. Hopefully, we can do that on Saturday.”
He also touched upon Maya Le Tissier’s England debut, praising the young defender.
““It’s really special to get your first appearance for your national team at senior level,” Skinner said.
“Again, I’m going to give credit to a lot of the work she’s done, a lot of the work Brighton did with her. We’ve picked her up, asked her to adapt to some things, tried to increase the intensity levels and I think Sarina said it herself, she’s very impressed with such a mature person and how much quality she has around the place.”
He continued, “We saw that talent in abundance and she’s a credit to her family, her country and her club.”
Skinner will be hoping to take all three points on the road this weekend in front of a large crowd at the Emirates.
