Manchester United’s recent results have been impressive. What has been even more remarkable is that they have done it largely without the player who many thought would be the star of the season.
Angel di Maria began his Manchester United career like a train and was scoring and making goals for fun in the autumn. But his form tailed off and his progress has since been hampered by groin issues.
The great news is that he trained ahead of the Stoke game and could even start on New Year’s Day.
We feel that we haven’t seen anything like the best of Di Maria yet and, at 26, he’s still improving. He will hope that he’s back for good this time after a false dawn at the beginning of the festive period.
In other excellent injury news Ander Herrera, who was also suffering with a muscle problem, trained this week and Adnan Januzaj is also back after illness.
All in all it means that the squad is looking fitter than at any point in the season. With Blind, Fellaini and Rojo also expected to return soon Manchester United may even have an unprecedented clean bill of health under Louis van Gaal in a few weeks.
