MORNING MAN UTD FANS
Manchester United came from behind to beat Aston Villa 3-1 at Villa Park yesterday to ensure Man City’s title party was kept on ice.
Bertrand Traore opened the scoring for the home side before a Bruno Fernandes penalty, a Mason Greenwood strike and an Edinson Cavani header sealed the win.
Harry Maguire limped off injured before Ollie Watkins got a late red card after he was booked for the second time for diving.
The image of the skipper hobbling away caused major panic for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
And after the game, the Old Trafford chief revealed Maguire could miss the Europa League final later this month.
Solskjaer said: “Hopefully [the Europa League final] will be OK with Harry. I don’t know.
“We need to check it. It might be a few weeks or a month – we don’t know. It was his calf or lower leg. I think the player landed on him and he twisted something.”
In-form left-back Luke Shaw credited Solskjaer’s team talk for inspiring the second-half rout. He told Sky Sports: “Going 1-0 down in the first half we knew it was going to be a hard game.
“We have been in this situation so many times – second half we came back much better. That’s a positive but we need to start the first half better than we normally do.
“Maybe we’re not ready for the game but we have the quality and can’t keep counting on second-half performances. [Solskjaer] said exactly what I have just said… we have been in this situation a lot of times, we have the quality, are a fit team and we always believe.”
Elsewhere, United have missed out on a £200million sponsorship deal due to the fall-out from their failed bid to join a European Super League.
Pressure from protesters against all the club’s commercial partners has forced Manchester-based The Hut Group to withdraw from an agreement to sponsor the club’s training kit.
They were due to replace AON with the words MyProtein, a firm owned by THG, on the tops in a ten-year deal.
But United are now looking for a new sponsor and feeling nervous about how toxic their brand may now be, with a huge part of their income coming from sponsorship.
A fan group calling itself NOTAPENNYMORE has launched a social media campaign aimed at the club’s main sponsors which include Adidas who sell United kit around the world.
They issued an open letter to all the commercial partners claiming their products would be targeted causing The Hut Group to pull out. This has happened a week after protests at Old Trafford and the club’s Lowry hotel base forced their home game against Liverpool to be postponed.
