Manchester United defender Diogo Dalot could be out for the rest of the season. Dalot is United’s first-choice right wing-back and his enforced loss is a major blow to their hopes of winning the Europa League.
United boss Ruben Amorim confirmed Dalot suffered a muscular injury and will miss Sunday’s Premier League trip to Bournemouth, as well as Thursday’s Europa League semi-final first leg away to Athletic Bilbao. Amorim said: “Diogo Dalot is out. We don’t know for how long he is out, but he is out for these next games so we will have to see.
“There is that possibility but we will check week by week because he works really hard and he can recover well. He has something in his muscle, on his calf. He had a sequence of games that he played at the time.
“We try to manage the load on the players who had to play a lot of minutes and Diogo felt something.”
Patrick Dorgu, who has operated at left wing-back can play on the right, is likely to move across to cover for the loss of Dalot. One option for Amorim is to play Noussair Mazraoui at left wing-back, with Luke Shaw potentially able to come back into the side on the left side of central defence.
But Amorim’s defensive options are limited, with Matthijs De Ligt and Ayden Heaven both sidelined. He added: “Amad is near, Mattha is near but the rest is at the same pace. Ayden is not ready, so that’s it.”
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Although United effectively have nothing to play for in the Premier League, Amorim insisted that this weekend’s trip to Bournemouth, rather than the Europa League semi-finals in mid-week, is currently the focus.
He continued: “The focus is we have to face it and we need to have that feeling every game here is important and we have to win every game, important not to lose. Of course, you see the context. We are going to face this game with the best team, we had a full week to prepare, some of the players didn’t play against Wolves so recover the players is not a bad thing. I will try to prepare for this game and try and win the next one.”
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