Scott is a real secret weapon for Solskjaer
McTOMINAY CAN BE KEY IN GRUELLING FIXTURE PILE-UP
WHEN United’s players walk out onto the pitch at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Friday night they are going to be taking a step into the unknown.
From travelling to the stadium, the dressing room environment, the pre-match rituals, the interaction with team-mates in an empty stadium and the post-game recovery, almost everything we thought we knew about football has changed.
Once the whistle blows, the competitiveness will begin to return, despite the unusual surroundings, but the first week or so of the Premier League restart will be a different test for every player, of their adaptability, their drive and their fitness levels.
It will be 100 days since United last played a competitive game on Friday. It’s a break longer than every post-season and while on this occasion the players haven’t decamped to exotic venues all over the world, they have had to adapt the fitness work they’ve been doing.
Initially, it might have been a home workout and a run, before the gradual return to training at Carrington. Over the past eight days there’s been a couple of inter-squad practice matches and two friendlies with West Brom, an exercise around getting used to the new protocols and a deserted Old Trafford as much as match fitness.
Nobody quite knows how the match fitness will be this week, whether players will be raring to go or still trying to get back to their pre-lockdown levels of fitness. But United might have a secret weapon here in Scott McTominay.
The 23-year-old is, to quote Luke Shaw, ‘a machine.’ Some of the 5km times he posted during lockdown were exceptional and the picture he stuck on Instagram of a workout just before the return to Carrington suggested his physique had improved if anything.
There were similarities with Cristiano Ronaldo, a former United player never afraid to pose for a snap with his top off either, understandably so.
During lockdown McTominay explained to the UTD podcast why he saw the Portuguese as an inspiration, even if there is little similarity in their games.
He said: “You look at Ronaldo and guys like this – and their mentality is at the top of the top.
“You don’t get any better than that. For me, looking up to somebody like that, the physique he’s got,
the way that he applies himself. I have just seen a picture of him, two days ago, reading and revising different things that he’s trying to learn in his life off the pitch.
“People are just far too comfortable too quickly in their life.”
There doesn’t look like there’s any danger of McTominay getting too comfortable. The way he’s forged a successful career at United and become an integral part of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s squad is already a success story, considering he was never thought of as a particularly rare talent as he came through the academy.
Those extraordinary energy and fitness levels have played a part in that, as has that mentality that he mentioned. Shaw is certainly impressed with his team-mate.
“Scotty is a joke. He’s one of the fittest in the team and, if I’m not wrong, I think his dad was a runner. He must be giving him tips and training him up at the moment. It’s unbelievable how fast that time is,” Shaw said of a 16-minute 5km run that McTominay posted.
“When I saw it, I put it into the treadmill to check the speed, and it was some ridiculous level, just a flat-out sprint, for 5km. Unbelievable. He’s a big, tall lad though, so maybe his big stride had something to do with it, but he’s a machine.”
Those fitness levels mean McTominay will be one of the players ready to hit the ground running this week. If the first two or three fixtures turn into a duel around energy levels, then the Scot could be a secret weapon for Solskjaer.