Your Monday Briefing is here to provide a snappy round-up of the weekend’s news for Manchester United fans, so scroll through our 10 key points to get yourself up to date…
Jose Mourinho’s Reds ruthlessly punished defensive errors to become the first club to win a Premier League game at the Emirates Stadium since January in one of the matches of the season so far, thanks to goals from Antonio Valencia and Jesse Lingard (2). Alexandre Lacazette scored for the Gunners but it wasn’t enough and the boss said afterwards:
“My players deserve all the great words. I don't know so many in English but amazing, phenomenal, fantastic. They deserved three points.”
2: THE BEST GOALKEEPER IN THE WORLD
That’s how Mourinho described David De Gea following his jaw-dropping performance in north London, where the Spain international made 14 saves – which is the joint-most in a Premier League game since 2003/04, when Opta started collecting this data. Our no.1 was voted our Man of the Match by fans, with a whopping 90 per cent of votes cast, and he later told MUTV: “Sometimes, you just feel unbeatable.”
3: POGBA OUT OF THE DERBY
The France international was shown a red card late in the second half when he mistimed a tackle on Hector Bellerin. It means he is suspended for three top-flight matches, beginning with this weekend’s Manchester derby at Old Trafford.
It was confirmed on Saturday morning that current France Under-17 international Aliou Traore has signed for United. The midfielder accompanied the squad on the pre-season training camp in Austria and he made his debut in the 3-2 defeat to Wolves at the weekend in the Under-18 Premier League Cup.
“Traore is a boy we've been looking at for a while,”Under-18s coach Kieran McKenna told MUTV recently. “He is a really powerful midfielder who likes to run box to box. He is very strong technically and is improving all the time.”
United’s Under-23s ensured continued involvement in the Premier League International Cup when we secured our place in the next phase with a hard-fought 2-0 win over Celtic at Leigh Sports Village. James Wilson bagged both goals - one in each half - to clinch United’s progress and also maintain his personal record of having scored in all this season’s games in the competition.
CSKA Moscow warmed up for Tuesday's final Champions League Group A match with a 6-0 win over Tosno. That result against us would not secure qualification to the knockout stages - as they must win 7-0 at Old Trafford!