This weekend, Manchester United return to action after a weekend off for the FA Cup fifth round, when they host fellow UEFA Champions League hopefuls Aston Villa.

Ahead of the game, United are priced up as the comfortable favourites. The visitors are on a serious slump of form, winning one of their last seven games, with six of those coming in the Premier League.

Plus, Unai Emery’s side will be in action away to Lille in the UEFA Europa League on Thursday evening, less than 72 hours before the clash with United, so the Reds should be much better physically equipped heading into the game.

However, Michael Carrick’s men will have to do it without a key player. Indeed, as Chris Wheeler is today reporting that defender Lisandro Martinez is set to miss the game after taking “longer than initially hoped” to recover from a calf strain.

Certainly far from ideal, and it raises further concerns that the injury was worse than the club were making out. We’ve seen this sort of thing happen plenty of times before.

Martinez first missed a game through this current injury on the 23rd February away to Everton. In his pre game interview with Sky Sports, Carrick said he had “felt something during the week” let’s assume the Friday, 20th of February is when he picked up the injury.

That was 18 days ago, nearly three weeks ago. By the time the Villa game comes around, it will have been over three weeks since he picked up the injury.

You have to say that does feel a fair bit of time for an injury that has been labelled as a strain. You can understand why some people would be cynical about it, until they can be proven otherwise.

There is a quick turnaround to the next game after Villa, with a trip to AFC Bournemouth on the Friday night. If he’s not available on Sunday, you’d imagine he will be — at best — touch and go for the trip to the South Coast.

In better news, that is the final game before the international break. You’d hope he will not be selected for Argentina duty and will be given the full two weeks to, all being well, fully recover from this frustrating injury. 

At the moment, the World Champions have one game penned in for the break - the Finalissima. However, there is doubt over the game going ahead. The showdown against Spain originally scheduled to take place in Qatar, but tensions in the Middle East have put the game in jeopardy. There is the possibility it is played in Europe instead. 

Well, let's just keep an eye out on any further updates on Martinez's injury. Certainly not good.

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