Luke Shaw.

Shaw: My double strike at Old Trafford

Wednesday 10 June 2020 10:00

Hi everyone, as you’ll have seen from the pictures, we had a great 11-a-side training game on the Old Trafford pitch over the weekend and it was eventful!

There have been a lot of different things circulating on social media and I’m happy to set the record straight: it did end 4-4 and I did score twice! Also on my team, Bruno [Fernandes] got one and Jamo [Daniel James] got one, while, on the other team, Rashy [Marcus Rashford] got two and so did Odion [Ighalo].

To be fair, my first goal was decent. It was from a great cross by Bruno and my volley went straight in. I was happy with it. My other one was just getting forward, Juan [Mata] played it to me on the edge of the box, I took a touch and shot in. It was quite an open game, as you can probably gather, with a lot of space, since it was the first game back.

Everyone looked good and the most important thing was getting minutes in the tank. This was definitely a step forward from the games we’ve been having at the training ground.

We're home! Video

We're home!

You’re going to love this exclusive footage from before Saturday’s training match at Old Trafford…

It was also our first chance to get used to a silent Old Trafford, which was different. We all felt like it made the pitch seem bigger because the stands are totally empty. Sometimes during games the fans push you on when you’re tired, but now we’ve got to get to grips without that support. It was a really valuable exercise to be able to play at Old Trafford without that.

We were creating our own noise around the stadium and that’s something we’ve got to make sure we do.

The important thing is that it’s another step forward. It’s getting more and more exciting now and we just want to get playing games. We’ve got a couple of in-house games at the training ground scheduled over the next few days, which will help us step things up even further before the big game next week against Spurs.

It's a massive fixture and I think everyone on both sides has got full-strength squads now, so it should be a really good game. It’s definitely one we’re all looking forward to.

In training, we’re looking really sharp, really fit and ready to go. We’re looking forward to it. We just need to pick up where we left off, doing the things we were doing before the break, and hopefully we can climb towards the Champions League spots, which is what we really want.

We went into lockdown having built up some real momentum, went 11 games unbeaten and we were playing well.

We weren’t just scoring goals but, defensively, everyone was doing a really good job too, not conceding many and teams were finding it hard to play against us. We’ve just got to remember what we were doing before. We’ve got our full squad back now, so hopefully we can push on even more with the quality that’s going to be added from those returning players.

It’s a big squad now and even more difficult for the manager to make decisions, but I’ve said, many a time, that at a club like Manchester United you need those decisions to make.

He needs players to be making it hard for him to pick a team because it’s the biggest club in the world and we need massive competition around the place to push everyone towards where United should be.

Take care and stay safe.

Luke.

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