Manchester United news: Wayne Rooney still injured but club yet to receive acceptable offers for players
Rooney missed the Boxing Day game with a thigh injury
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Jose Mourinho has rejected West Brom’s £13 million offer for French international midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin and insists no first team squad players will be allowed to leave Old Trafford on loan next month.
Back-up goalkeeper Sam Johnstone, wanted by Stoke, Aston Villa and Sunderland, is the only exception and will be free to join one of those clubs temporarily.
But in the week that Anthony Martial’s agent talked up the possibility of joining Sevilla on loan, Mourinho insists nobody else is making such a move
Mourinho said: “Sam Johnstone is the only player that I allow to go on loan. He doesn’t play one minute and he needs to play.
“I don’t want to sell players. The club and the board is totally with me, but as I said before, if a player is not having lots of minutes and really wants to leave, we have no right to stop him leaving if the conditions are our conditions.
“And up until this moment, we have not received one single offer that we are going to accept.”
That includes Tony Pulis’s bid for Schneiderlin who is surplus to Mourinho’s requirements and has been told he will be sold when the window opens, but only when an acceptable offer comes in.
Everton are also keen on French midfielder Schneiderlin, signed for £25 million from Southampton by Mourinho’s predecessor Louis van Goal, and the Merseyside club are reportedly prepared to go to £20 million, the sort of figure that will prompt United into talking business.
The only exception to Mourinho’s insistence that no players will be allowed to leave on loan is goalkeeper Johnstone and he has become expendable since the emergence of 20-year-old Portuguese keeper Joel Castro Pereira who has leapfrogged above him in United’s pecking order.
“We have a young goalkeeper in Joel and a goalkeeper that played many minutes in the past six months,” said Mourinho.
“And for the development of both, Joel played for six months in the Portuguese Premier League, now it’s time for Sam to play six months and that is the only loan move we are going to do.”
Mourinho, preparing for the New Year’s Eve visit of Middlesbrough and his friend Aitor Karanka, will be without forward Wayne Rooney.
And he admits that he is not looking forward to his “brothers in arms” encounter with Karanka.
Mourinho said: “He is my friend and a real friend. I always want him to win and he always wants me to win, but tomorrow is the first time where I am against him. That’s football.
“Sometimes brothers against brothers happened, a father against his son maybe, and that would be even more difficult. For 90 minutes, he and I want to win and that is it.
“It is better to see him before the game because after the match, somebody will have a sad face. But I don’t care about that. I am in the race to win tomorrow. That’s my objective.”
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