Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford are “looking good” in Manchester United training, says Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, with the Red Devils seeing an enforced break work in their favour on the injury front.
Prior to Premier League football shutting down amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Red Devils had picked up a number of untimely injuries.
World Cup winner Pogba had seen fitness issues restrict him to just eight outings in 2019-20, while England international Rashford was left sweating on his involvement at the European Championships.
That event has been pushed back, competitive action is yet to resume in England and professional clubs have only recently been freed to start working as groups again.
There is still plenty of preparatory work to be overseen before a green light can be given for the current campaign to be completed, but United are in a stronger position than they were.
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Certain members of their walking wounded are now back to full working order, with Solskjaer – who had seen United over cause for optimism before entering lockdown – looking forward to being in a position to pick from a full squad once more.
Quizzed by MUTV on how Pogba and Rashford are progressing, the United boss said: “They’re looking good, they’ve joined training now and they’ve done everything the other boys have been doing. No reaction so far, touch wood.
“When we get started, it looks like we can have a full squad to choose from.”
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Two months spent working on individual programmes has not been easy for any of those in the Red Devils’ ranks, but Solskjaer has few concerns over the state of his squad.
He added: “That’s what you do when you’re a footballer, you just want to play football. Of course, the first step now has been coming together, obviously in small groups, but they’ve enjoyed that.
“I think when we start training in full groups, of course we need a bit of time to gel again, but they’re mentally ready and physically they look okay too.”
United will be chasing down a top-four finish whenever they are back on the field, with Solskjaer pleased to see a sense of normality returning after what has been a testing situation for the global population as a whole.
He said on being back in training: “The boys have been fantastic, the weather’s been good and they’ve enjoyed it.
“Hopefully now we’ve proved we can do this safely and we can move to the next step. It’s been really enjoyable being on the training ground again.
“Everyone’s looking sharp, everyone’s been in with a good mood and we’ve been splitting up in groups so [working in] fours and fives together and they’ve really done well. Hopefully, they can as I said, step up and go to bigger training groups but so far it’s been good.
“The players have been looking after themselves. They’ve done well. Charlie [Owen] the fitness coach, Kieran [McKenna], Michael [Carrick] and Martyn [Pert] have been on to them all the time. They’ve not had many days off!
“There have been video calls and of course the last couple of weeks they’ve been stepping it up.”