Ralf Rangnick has named his team for today’s visit of Watford.
The Hornets inflicted a 4-1 win defeat on United in November which spelled the end of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign as manager. Watford, however, have their own new manager in Roy Hodgson, and after winning last week, they come to Old Trafford full of confidence.
“I admire him for his energy and it’s still a difference if you are a manger in England with that many games to play without a winter break, so I admire him for that,” Rangnick said of Hodgson. “I’m not so sure if in my 70s I still want to be in charge as a head coach, no matter in which country, but this is what I admire him for. He’s a fantastic person, whenever I saw him in the past, whenever we spoke, it was always great fun to speak with him and he’s just a nice character.”
“At the time, it was five defeats out of the last 7 games under Ole and obviously, morale was down confidence was down, therefore it was good that Michael Carrick and his coaching staff achieved two good results in the Premier League and one good away win at Villarreal in order to qualify for the knockout phase of the Champions League. My job since then was obviously to stabilise the team, to make sure they don’t concede as many goals as they did. I think back then we were conceding almost two goals a game. We have since achieved that, we have not achieved as many goals as they did at the time but as a manager, you always want to progress quicker and this is the next step that in the next few weeks we become more resilient and stable within our performances within games and from one game to another. This is the next step we hopefully can achieve with the team.”
Rangnick admitted today’s game is a must win. “This would have also been the case even if the [Arsenal] result had been a draw yesterday,” he said. “This is a game we have to win, we want to win and we need to win. No matter what the result was yesterday they also have two games in hand and we also know we play against them in April. There are still enough games but our focus now is on doing our job and we need to make sure we get as many points as we can out of the games we have. We must not take notice of the games around us.”
The game kicks off at 3pm and is not being broadcast in the UK.
Team :
De Gea
Wan-Bissaka Lindelof Varane Telles
Pogba Fred Matic Fernandes
Elanga Ronaldo
