Considering how seriously Mourinho takes every competition his teams play in, leaving his captain out for this match is something of a surprise.
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Manchester United will take on Feyenoord in the opening game of their Europa League campaign at De Kuip, and Jose Mourinho is expected to play a youthful side in the Netherlands.
Herrera has featured in three of United’s four Premier League games so far this season and also helped the Red Devils beat Leicester City to win the Community Shield back in August.
Among those players is 30-year-old captain Wayne Rooney who will not fly out ahead of the game but instead will be “rested” at home.
“It’s not the big dream of every big player, but we are not in the Champions League”, added the Portuguese.
But Mourinho says he still wants to win Europe’s second tier competition and will ensure his players are motivated for the challenge.
“I think United are under enormous pressure because everyone wants them to win the Premier League”.
The 20-man squad Manchester United will be fielding in the Europa league clash against Feyenoord does not feature Wayne Rooney or Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
Marcos Rojo will start in defence in place of England worldwide Shaw, while Mourinho had previously stated that striker Marcus Rashford would make his first start of the season on Thursday. We want to do well and for a club of our dimension it is not to be out of the competition in the group stage. It would be better if we had the privilege of playing on a Monday after a Thursday game to have one day [recovery] but we didn’t get that privilege.
“It’s more hard, yes [to win the Premier League when you are playing in the Europa League]”.
“It’s a great chance, not only for me but for Feyenoord, for the team, we have a young team”.
World-record signing Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who has not played in the competition since 2001, are part of that show of strength in Rotterdam, where Shaw, Valencia and Rooney are the key absentees.
It’s not all good news for Guardiola, whose side has the only flawless Premier League record of four wins from four matches so far this season, with history not proving kind.
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Kenny said: “Most neutral observers would think that we have very little chance of making it through when you consider the teams in it – Maccabi, AZ and of course Zenit St Petersburg, who won the competition outright in recent history”.
