Manchester United manager Ralph Lonnick revealed that he originally planned to arrange a start for Cavani in the Red Devils' game away to Newcastle, but the Uruguayan striker offered that his situation was not enough to be the main player, and it was best to play as a substitute first.
Before this match, the 34-year-old Cavani had not played in more than a month and the last time he played for Manchester United was on November 2. Therefore, Cavani, who has a lot of team spirit, said that he is willing to play as a substitute first and then play again at the right time to help the team.
After half-time, Manchester United, who was 1-0 behind, directly replaced Cavani, who also lived up to expectations, scoring a goal to help the team get a point. The data shows that this is the sixth goal Edinson Cavani has scored as a substitute, and he has scored eight goals away from home in 2021, one goal ahead of Ronaldo C, becoming the Red Devils' top scorer on the road.
"In the first two days of the game, I was actually thinking about getting Cavani to start." "On the eve of the game, I talked to him and he offered to play because he didn't know how he was doing. But trailing 0-1 at half-time, I felt the team had to take a more daring risk, we needed to change the way we played, and that's why we replaced him and Jaden (Sancho)."
This season, Cavani has failed to attend pre-season training camps, and he has suffered many injury problems, with only nine of his 24 games this season. After the expiration of his contract with Manchester United this season, Cavani will definitely leave the team, and Italy's "Football Market Network" said that Manchester United may bring in another Paris Saint-Germain center-forward , Argentina international Icardi as a replacement. Of course, there are many centre-forwards with Manchester United, Dortmund striker Errin Haaland, Fiorentina's Flanovic have been rumored, and how many of them are true will take time to verify.
Lonnick also openly admitted that United's performance did not meet his expectations, and he had hoped that after he took charge, the team could have made greater progress. "Of course not satisfied," Lonnick said, "every coach, every manager with ambition, it makes no difference, I want the team to improve faster, to improve more, but to do it, you have to have enough training, and we closed carried out Carrington training ground for 4 days."
Lonnick said: "After the game against Norwich, we only had eight or nine players to train, and after that, the players could only return to the training ground in pieces. In recent days, in terms of the scale of training, we have almost returned to normal practice, but we have not been able to do much. On the other hand, in the two or three training sessions before the game, the team looked good, so in the battle against Newcastle, our performance in terms of speed, pace and confrontation was somewhat surprising to me. You could say it's a negative surprise."
The Manchester Evening News believes that Lonnick will make major changes in the squad at home to Burnley, especially in the midfield, Cavani is expected to start, and Van de Beek may also replace Bruno Fernandes, who has accumulated 5 yellow cards and was suspended. The newspaper predicts the starting line-up of Manchester United: De Gea/DiOgu Dalo, Varane, Maguire, Tres/McTomine, Fred/Sancho, Van der Beek/Cavani, Ronaldo.