Jose Mourinho Facing Injury Crisis With 9 Players Set to Miss Liverpool Clash on Sunday

​Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho looks set to be without nine first team players when his side travel to Merseyside to face rivals Liverpool in Sunday's derby.

Mourinho's growing injury list has increased at the wrong time with his side in dire need of a positive result at Anfield. They currently occupy sixth position in the division, eight points off the top four.

The Portuguese looks forced to play a centre half pairing of ​Eric Bailly and ​Phil Jones, who scored a comical own goal in United's ​defeat to Valencia, as ​Marcos Rojo, Victor Lindelof and Chris Smalling are all set to miss out.

​Luke Shaw picked up an injury in the warm-up against Fulham, while Matteo Darmian is still out and Diogo Dalot has succumbed to an unspecified injury and did not train ahead of the Valencia game.

Three key players who started on the bench against Valencia all featured in the match and, when asked in his post-match press conference whether the trio would start at Anfield, Mourinho, as quoted by ​Manchester Evening News, joked: "You have only to find eight more."

Mourinho went on to clarify whether any of the players who started the match in Valencia could retain their place against Liverpool.

"Marcos Rojo no because he's injured," he added. "The rest are not injured, they belong to the squad, we have lots of players that were not here today because they are injured, this is our squad, our players, they have a chance to play Sunday. 

"Smalling is injured, Lindelof is injured, Darmian is injured, ​Martial is injured, Dalot is injured, the only two players I could bring and didn't was ​De Gea and ​Matic.

"Apart from that nobody, nobody. And last week, we had three matches, the majority of the players are the players that are playing all the time and I had no other options, includes a player like Marcos Rojo that I expect to play today and give a rest to Ashley Young as an example but at half-time he is injured and he is out.

"The players that I play, if this was a match to decide the group would be a very similar team, so that's the reality. When you analyse Manchester United and analyse our ambitions and our level sometimes you should learn the situation a little bit better because you make certain kind of comments."

Source: 90min

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