March 09, (THEWILL) – Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo missed Manchester United squad training again due to the hip flexor injury that kept him out of Sunday’s embarrassing loss to city rivals Manchester City.
Ronaldo missed two games in a row against Aston Villa earlier this season due to the same injury worries.
When the problem flared up again before the Manchester derby, the attacker had to travel to Portugal and did not see his teammates suffer an unnerving 4-1 defeat to their rivals.
Ronaldo has not trained since that defeat and he did not train again on Wednesday even though he had returned to Carrington on Tuesday. Yet, United will be hoping that their leading scorer returns in time for their crucial match against Tottenham on Saturday evening.
United are currently fifth in the Premier League table, but a win for Spurs, who have two games in hand, would put them one point ahead of them.
Speaking after the derby, Ralf Rangnick admitted that United could not afford any more mistakes if they wanted to keep their slim chances of finishing in the top four alive.
“If we still want to have a chance to finish fourth at the end of the season, we can almost not drop anymore points, and we also know that in those 10 games that we have to play, there are a few other difficult ones so let’s take it game by game,” Rangnick noted.
“For us, it’s important we keep developing the team, which we did in the last couple of months, and then make sure we can win the next two home games against Tottenham and against Atletico, two very important games for us to come.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
