Christian Eriksen has revealed when he discovered he would be starting in Manchester United's 2-0 win at Nottingham Forest.
United strengthened their grasp on third place on Sunday with an exciting and dominant victory at the City Ground. Antony opened the scoring in the first half as he bundled a loose ball over the line before Diogo Dalot secured the points later on with a confident finish.
The win was made even more impressive by the fact Erik ten Hag's growing injury crisis worsened further before the game as Marcel Sabitzer was forced to drop out of the starting XI late on after suffering a groin injury in the warm-ups. Eriksen was his replacement but he didn't discover he was playing until a matter of minutes before kick-off when Darren Fletcher informed him as the players were heading back to the dressing rooms.
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"Not a lot," he told Sky Sports when asked how much time there was before the game when he found out he was starting. "They do some finishing in the end that's always the last drill before they do some springs and go in and when they start doing finishing I heard Marcel's gone in, he felt something and I was preparing myself to see if I was ready or not.
"At the time I didn't know if he was going to pick me or not so really it was Mitchell [coach, Van der Gaag] asking just be ready, I don't know who's going to come on but just be ready.
"Yeah on the way in," he added when explaining when he found out. "Fletch said on the way in I think it's you. I said, 'Okay that's fine'. Mentally I was ready [to start]. I've been out for a while so I need to do my prep and I need to be ready to play, that’s really throwing me in and like today I’ll be ready."
It was Eriksen's first start since he suffered his own nasty injury back in January and he's been impressed with what he's seen while out on the sidelines. He continued: "They've impressed me. They've kept the intensity. The level, they've kept how they play. Everything, even from the outside, has been looking good.
"Yeah if you take into account how we started, I came here and played as a striker in the first game. It's a completely different role now and a completely different feeling around the club and also on the pitch. The feeling around the boys are really good.
"There's loads of games but we want to go for everything as much as we can. The league is probably too far but the rest, revenge we want in Seville on Thursday and then after that of course it’s the semi-final. We want to compete, we want to be in as many games as possible. You have to win to be in finals."
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