Key quotes from Erik's press conference

The England international featured heavily during our US endeavours and looked to be approaching his best against Real Betis and Arsenal.

Erik spoke to the media about Rashford, new signing Joshua Zirkzee and more, as the Dutchman looked ahead to our FA Community Shield meeting with Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday.

Below are some of the key quotes from the boss's pre-match press conference, and you can both read, and watch, what he had to say below...

INJURY WOES
"No, I can't tell you. With some of them I also wouldn't call it an injury, but it's part of building up into the season and a precaution because they had issues in the pre-season and in the spring. So it's a continual process with them to build them up into a new season. But I heard the question: how do you address this game tomorrow? But also even when it's coming into a league game, we are not in a position where we can risk players and then lose them for a long period."

LATEST ON ZIRKZEE
"Yeah, we had actually only just one or two team training [sessions], where everyone was there. So yeah, it was a very short period. Last week for four days he did an individual [programme] then he did for three days, group sessions and now we are 100 per cent with our team. So it's a very short period to assess this."

MATCH SHARPNESS
"You run a risk when you have this approach because top football is going to the edge, going over the edge and then players get injured. That is not avoidable and it's a problem for us, but for every Premier League club we have seen, I have seen the list. We are not number one in the injuries."

IS ZIRKZEE READY?
"I think it's [the same] for every player who is coming into a new league, into a new club and it takes time. I think also for every player to go into the Premier League, we all know the intensity is higher in comparison with the leagues where they are coming from, but he is already experienced. He was a player in Germany, he was a player in Belgium, he was a player in Italy. He has already collected a lot of good experience and that will help him. But still he has to make a step and we have to help him and then you see it's not like, say early days, that you have a proper pre-season with the team and it's not you went to the Euros so you had to train on his own individual [plan] here. He and we need time to fit him in and that will take some weeks."

COMPETITIVE SPIRIT
"Well, we will again, we will challenge for the Carabao Cup and we will challenge for the FA Cup as well. And so that shows we are competitive and it shows that we can beat any opponent. That is what we proved in the last two seasons. It doesn't matter how we faced all of them in the FA Cup and we beat Liverpool, we beat Man City. But our challenge is to bring consistency in and also I say this with all the respect against lower-class teams, I don't think there are lower-class teams in the Premier League. [Everyone] has to win the points and I think other teams are ahead of us in that prospect and therefore we have to catch up."

PRE-SEASON WORK
"Yeah, I can see it like this way because we didn't have time together and we have to work on our game model and to find the patterns. There was a break and they all played Euros, Copa America, so they were in different teams, with different game models and with different patterns. Now we have to bring this together and it's complicated. I'm not the only one and United is not the only one who has to deal with this problem. There are also teams with less international players; they can make a proper pre-season. So they are probably ahead of us. We have to deal with it in the coming weeks, while avoiding dropping points."

SILVERWARE UP FOR GRABS
"We know already we can beat City and that doesn't depend on the result on Saturday and that will not change that belief because, yeah the FA Cup win was a much higher occasion than the game on Saturday, but nevertheless we want to win. We showed in all occasions - more than that one - that we can beat City. So we have to believe but we don't want to take risks with players and lose players for a long period, because that is what we have to take from last season. When you are getting in a pattern with [players] missing due to many injuries, missing players in the same unit of a team affects the results. And yeah, we want to go up in the season and to get the results but then players have to be available."