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Manchester United

Boost for Man Utd as Crystal Palace without 2 key players on Saturday

Manchester United return from Champions League duty in Moscow on Wednesday night to take on pointless Crystal Palace at Old Trafford in the Premier League on Saturday.

We ran out convincing and comfortable 4-1 winners over CSKA Moscow in our second group game last night with Romelu Lukaku helping himself to a first-half brace either side of Anthony Martial’s penalty, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored our final goal just before the hour.

In the process we became the first team to ever score four goals in an away game against CSKA Moscow in European competition.

Prior to this weekend’s match versus Roy Hodgson’s Crystal Palace, Jose Mourinho has complained about the schedule of the game given that we were many miles away from England in action only three days before returning to domestic action.

The Eagles have lost all six of their Premier League matches without scoring a single goal to start the 2017-18 season, replacing Frank de Boer after only four matches.

Crystal Palace’s unfortunate start has been aided by the absence of Wilfried Zaha.  The former-United winger is arguably the South East London club’s best player but has been sidelined with a knee injury picked up in their 3-0 hammering at home by Huddersfield Town on the opening weekend of the season.

Zaha is not due back in action until after next month’s international break.

Perhaps the only positive for Crystal Palace so far this season has been the performances of 19-year-old defender Timothy Fosu-Mensah.  The youngster’s performances have been so good for the Premier League strugglers that he even made his senior international debut for the Netherlands last month.

Fosu-Mensah has started all six of Palace’s Premier League games, five of them at centre-back and one on the right of a back four.  He has been a rock at the back of an otherwise leaky defence.

The teenager cannot play at Old Trafford on Saturday as part of our season-long loan deal between the two clubs.