Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim has announced that Marcus Rashford will miss Sunday’s English Premier League trip to Liverpool because of illness.
England forward Rashford has not featured for United in the last five games and has been linked with a move away from Old Trafford.
“At the moment he is ill,” Amorim said during his pre-match press conference on Friday. “He is not training. He is going to be out this week.”
Amorim has also revealed that United are close to agreeing a contract extension with winger Amad Diallo, whose present deal expires at the end of the season.
The Red Devils boss also confirmed that the club would activate Harry Maguire’s one-year contract extension.
“We are happy to continue with Harry,” said Amorim. “We will trigger our option. He needs to improve as a leader because we are starving for leaders on the pitch.”
When asked about Maguire coming through a difficult period at United under previous manager Erik ten Hag, Amorim said: “It is the same as Josh [Zirkzee], there are moments in the career of a player that are different and I think he coped very well with his struggles and when you look at our team.
“He is a leader, he has to improve that part and he has to improve our game.”
Manchester United have not won at Anfield for nine years, and the league leaders are favourites to beat their struggling visitors on Sunday.
“We know that it is going to be a tough moment, really different context from both teams,” the Portuguese coach said.
“They had that strong base for long years, but we work this week to win the game, we will try to do that.
“I am just focused on the performance. I have not focused on losing or what could happen, we had some losses, we prepared this game to win and we know what we are going to face.
“My focus is to prepare the team to not suffer that difficult moment you saw in the first 15 minutes against Newcastle [when United conceded], I want to improve that.
“I think that is clear, that [starting slowly in matches] is a massive problem for us and it was not just this game.”
On leadership within the team, Amorim said: “I think it is not one thing of our team, it is all the teams. If you want to be a top, top team you have to be leaders and we have that in the dressing room, but they have to step up.
“We have a lot of young kids also and this moment is really hard. We can look at the table but you are still Manchester United.”
