Manchester United vs Bayern Munich Preview

The final game of preseason looms over the Red Devils as they face bitter European rivals Bayern Munich on Sunday evening (19:15 GMT). This game has some serious history with United drawing twice in the group stages of the Champions League in 1998/1999 season and going on to beat Bayern in the final with late goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to complete the treble that year. Since then, however, fortune favoured the Bundesliga champions as Bayern Munich have overcome United in three separate Champions League Quarter Finals in 2000/01, 2009/10 and 2013/14, in which they won, were runners up and lost in the semi-finals to Real Madrid respectively. Although it seems that Manchester United have struggled to get deals done, with only Fred and Diogo Dalot joining the club, Bayern have not faired any better with only Leon Goretzka and teenage sensation Alphonso Davies joining the club whilst allowing Arturo Vidal to leave Bavaria for Barcelona and the constant talk of Robert Lewandowski, Jerome Boateng and Joshua Kimmich all departing the club, the manager, Nico Kovac cannot be pleased. 

For Bayern Munich, Manuel Neuer has not featured during preseason as he steps up his recovery from a broken foot which has sidelined him for such a long time but it is claimed that he may be fit for the start of the season. While Sebastian Rudy may feature wearing a protective mask to shield his broken nose, James Rodruigez should not feature against the side he was heavily linked to last summer, due to a calf injury. As for United, there are a series of injury problems to deal with in preparing for the Friday night match against Leicester; as Valencia and Matic are guaranteed to miss the fixture, and Smalling, McTominay and Dalot all doubts as well. Martial has returned to training following the birth of his child and the return to good health of his partner. He recently tweeted that his family will always come first but has personally shown no indication that he wants to leave the club and to be quite frank the media has overhyped this situation as if there is a rift between the French winger and Jose Mourinho and the comments the Portugese manager made about Martial's arrival have been taken out of context and misinterpreted. The Frenchman is likely to start alongside Juan Mata and Alexis Sanchez, of whom the latter was subject to a lot of interest from Bayern towards the end of the 2016/17 season and surrounded the Chilean through the 10-2 aggregate Champions League Round of 16 between the Bavarians and the Gunners. 

Both sides are playing their last friendly matches before competitive football begins for them but while Manchester United play off the back of a hard fought 2-1 win over Real Madrid, Bayern face United after back-to-back defeats to Juventus and Manchester City, scoring two goals and conceding five all in all. They have been playing inexperienced youngsters as the spine for their teams but may not have to for this game with Muller, Thiago, Boateng, Kimmich, Hummels and Lewandowski to name a few, still yet to feature in preseason due to their World Cup commitments but since none of these players made it past the Round of 16 and in fact, Corentin Tolisso being the only Bayern player to do go further. Manchester United have regained Victor Lindelof, top goalscorer, Romelu Lukaku as well as English duo, Marcus Rashford and Phil Jones after they returned to Manchester following the match against Real Madrid. Leaving Jesse Lingard, Ashley Young, Paul Pogba and Marouane Fellaini to be the only players yet to return from holiday. 

This should be an interesting game at the Allianz Arena as both sides will want to end their preseasons on a high note and should have the majority of their first team players back. It could go either to a 1-0 win or 3-2 depending on the moods of the players but hopefully the latter will occur and in United's favour.