Louis van Gaal has revealed Chris Smalling, Ander Herrera and Wayne Rooney have trained all week ahead of Manchester United's Barclays Premier League match against Norwich City, although it remains to seen whether the trio will feature at Old Trafford on Saturday. Smalling has not featured since hobbling through the latter stages of the 3-2 defeat at Wolfsburg and Rooney has missed the last three outings with an ankle injury sustained in the 1-1 draw at Leicester City. Herrera has also watched the last five games from the stands while recovering from a hamstring problem. In an interview with MUTV, van Gaal also confirmed Matteo Darmian and Jesse Lingard are both unavailable to face Norwich. Marcos Rojo, Luke Shaw and Antonio Valencia are all long-term absentees, while Bastian Schweinsteiger is still suspended as part of his three-match ban. “There are more or less three players who are trained this week, for a full week, so that’s not bad,” the manager told MUTV at the Aon Training Complex. “The players who have trained this week are Rooney, Herrera, Smalling and Young is also coming back I think, but we have to wait and see. "We have to decide if they can play or not because some players like Herrera have already been 'out of the office' for three or four weeks.” On the fitness of Ashley Young, van Gaal continued: “In the last match he had a slight problem, he was feeling something and we cannot take the risk I think. We have investigated that this week. He shall train today [Friday], so we shall have to wait and see if he is available. “Lingard is out of the question, and Darmian is out of the question." Later, in his press conference, van Gaal admitted his captain may return to action: "Rooney has been out for more or less two weeks so it is possible that he will play but we have to wait and see," he said. Van Gaal also discussed the recent progress of Nick Powell, who has returned to the first-team fold following a lengthy injury lay-off to make several cameo appearances. “He was also injured for a long time so he’s now recovering and coming in the match rhythm, but now because of the many injuries he cuts his chances and you never know [if he will play against Norwich].”
Just two days after getting the sack from Chelsea, Jose Mourinho is already eyeing up his next move. According to ESPN, the Portuguese has designs on becoming the next Manchester United boss, and has put his people to the task. It’s well documented that Mourinho has always harboured ambitions of managing United, indeed his dream was to directly succeed Sir Alex Ferguson – although he’ll never publicly admit that. Reliable sources such as Diego Torres’ best-selling book Prepare To Lose claim that Mourinho was close to tears when he was overlooked for David Moyes, and that he only returned to Chelsea by default. Now on the market once again and with the Old Trafford hotseat looking like it could be vacant this summer (Van Gaal is under increasing pressure and is looking decreasingly likely to see out his 3-year contract), Mourinho now believes he can get a shot at managing United.
