Ole Gunnar Solskjaer insists Romelu Lukaku is still a key member of his Manchester United squad despite favouring Marcus Rashford as his first-choice striker.<\/p>\n
Lukaku has been forced to settle for a bit-part role in Solskjaer’s opening five Premier League games, playing just 74 minutes since Jose Mourinho’s departure.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Rashford has seized his opportunity in a central role, scoring four goals already during Solskjaer’s short interim reign.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the Norwegian caretaker boss claims \u00a375million signing Lukaku remains an important figure at the club.<\/p>\n
“He’s a big part of the squad, definitely, with his personality around the place,” Solskjaer said ahead of Saturday’s visit of Brighton, live on talkSPORT2.<\/p>\n
“There’s no one scoring as many goals as him in training.<\/p>\n
“There are the three who play the most [Rashford, Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard] but then you’ve got Rom, you’ve got Juan (Mata), you’ve got Alexis (Sanchez), so I’ve got a front six I can rotate with and Rom is definitely going to be playing games.”<\/p>\n
It is a month since the Old Trafford hierarchy called time on Mourinho’s turbulent tenure, with background backbiting compounding on-field struggles.<\/p>\n
Few were sad to see the Portuguese go and the former manager spoke in-depth for the first time on Thursday, when he told beIN SPORTS that “in modern football there is a problem between the coach and the player”.<\/p>\n
Solskjaer does not appear to have encountered such problems such his arrival, getting United playing with swagger and the team with a smile.<\/p>\n
Asked if modern players need to be treated differently, the Norwegian said: “I think so. Times are changing.<\/p>\n
“I’m old enough to have worked with older players than me and older managers, so I know that type of player and that type of management school.<\/p>\n
“But I’m young enough and I’ve got kids, I’ve got an 18-year-old myself, and I’ve worked with young players back home. It is a different era.<\/p>\n
“Those values, beliefs and principles don’t change.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer insists Romelu Lukaku is still a key member of his Manchester United squad despite favouring Marcus Rashford as his first-choice striker. Lukaku has been forced to settle for a bit-part role in Solskjaer’s opening five Premier League games, playing just 74 minutes since Jose Mourinho’s departure. Meanwhile, Rashford has seized his opportunity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}