Jose Mourinho is anything but a naive manager, so it would be hard to believe that the Turkish media have managed to find out his Manchester United team for this evening.
Nevertheless, the Manchester United squad trained at Fenerbahce’s stadium last night and there’s been some educated guesses in the Turkish media.
Sabah newspaper believe Mourinho’s Manchester United will set up 4-2-3-1, with Henrikh Mkhitaryan coming into the team, and Wayne Rooney upfront. There’d be no Zlatan Ibrahimovic starting.
Overseas newspapers have been able to name changed teams on the morning of a match previously, seeing from the following evening’s training.
The best example of this is probably when Brendan Rodgers changed his team vastly for the away match to Real Madrid.
Spain’s Marca named it on the morning of the match, with Liverpool fans mocking the newspaper for, as they saw it, getting it do so wrong.
The mood quickly changed when it turned out Marca were right.
Will that be the case with Sabah? Who knows, but what would perhaps weaken their claim is that another Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet, have picked a different team.
They still believe Rooney will be up top for Manchester United, but don’t go as far as naming Mkhitaryan, and name Chris Smalling, who hasn’t travelled.
Agreeing with the original claim from Sabah is Vatan newspaper, who in true Turkish media style go super colourful with their predicted teams and line it up as a battle between Robin van Persie and his former Manchester United teammate Wayne Rooney.
