Lukaku out of Utd’s match against Juventus & doubtful for Manchester derby

Romelu Lukaku has been ruled out of the Champions League clash against Juventus and could miss this weekend’s Manchester derby, Jose Mourinho has said. 

Mourinho was expected to recall Lukaku to his starting XI against Bournemouth on Saturday, after dropping the Belgian for Manchester United’s clash with Everton. But Lukaku picked up an injury on Friday afternoon and was unable to feature in the 2-1 victory over Bournemouth, with Marcus Rashford scoring an injury-time winner. 

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But Mourinho has confirmed he is still injured and could even miss the Manchester derby at the Etihad on Sunday. ‘[Romelu] is injured for tomorrow and we don’t know for Sunday [against Manchester City],’ Mourinho said.

Manchester United suffered a 1-0 defeat to Juve in the reverse fixture and Mourinho is anticipating another tough test against the Italian champions. He added: ‘Tomorrow is a big match and it’s big enough to not think about ‘what next?’. It’s big enough to think just about the match against Juventus. ‘It’s not crucial for us. The matches against Young Boys and Valencia are going to define the second position. 

‘Tomorrow is of course a match that we want to win. We have to play, we want to play and we want that very, very much. ‘The best experiences for teams is when you play against teams that are really the top, but in relation to the Champions League it doesn’t matter what happens here. ‘There are two more matches to play and we are going to fight for qualification until the next match.’