Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho could easily have had one eye on the huge Manchester derby match against league leaders Manchester City next week when selecting his team for this fixture.
However, he decided to name a very strong starting line-up for Saturday afternoon's match against Swansea City.
The big news was that Paul Pogba returned to the starting line-up after being in and out of the side of late. The 25-year-old's performances have been questioned recently with some speculation about his future this summer. Scott McTominay was the player to make way for his inclusion.
Mourinho opted to make four other changes from the team that claimed a 2-0 win in their FA Cup quarter-final against Brighton & Hove Albion before the international break.
David De Gea, Victor Lindelof, Ashley Young and Alexis Sanchez all returned to the team in place of Sergio Romero, Eric Bailly, Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial.
The Swans have struggled against United in recent times shown by the fact they have lost four out of their last five meetings in all competitions, drawing the other.
Despite this, they have drastically improved since Carlos Carvalhal’s arrival as manager and would have fancied their chances of picking up some sort of result this afternoon.
Every game between now and the end of the season is huge for Carvalhal’s team as they look to secure Premier League survival. Following their 3-0 defeat in the FA Cup to Tottenham Hotspur last time out, they can now solely focus on achieving exactly that.
Carvalhal did not make many changes to his side for this encounter. The biggest decision was that he opted to drop striker Tammy Abraham to the bench as Andre Ayew replaced him in the starting line-up.
Team News
Manchester United: De Gea, Valencia (C), Lindelof, Smalling, Young, Matic, Pogba, Mata, Lingard, Alexis, Lukaku.
Manchester United Substitutes: Bailly, Martial, Rashford, Herrera, Shaw, McTominay, Pereira.
Swansea City: Fabianski, Naughton, van der Hoorn, Fernandez (C), Mawson, Olsson, Ki sung-Yeung, King, Dyer, Clucas, A. Ayew.
Swansea City Substitutes: Nordfeldt, Bartley, Roberts, Carroll, Routledge, Narsingh, Abraham.