Eric Bailly fully fit ahead of Liverpool game

Praise be, glory, and hallelujah: Eric Bailly is “fully fit”. Manchester United’s best defender has been back in training for a few weeks, but his first-team involvement has been restricted to cameos against Huddersfield and Chelsea. Now, according to Jose Mourinho, he’s up to strength, and just in time, too. Mo Salah’s coming to visit this Saturday.

Does he go straight back into the starting lineup? In tBB’s view, he kind of has to. Victor Lindelof was noticeably shaky against Crystal Palace last Monday, and while Liverpool aren’t likely to offer the same aerial test, Salah and co. will require the closest of error-free attention. We’re not writing Lindelof off completely, but we don’t quite trust him yet.

Obviously, ideally there’d be another Bailly ready to replace Chris Smalling as well; he may have been Mourinho’s man of the match against Palace, but he definitely wasn’t ours. But since Ed Woodward has consistently refused to appoint a director of cloning, we’ll just have to make do.

Other injury news: Marouane Fellaini is back, everybody else that was crocked is still crocked.