Ruben Amorim, the head coach of Manchester United, has addressed Lisandro Martínez's ACL injury. He verified that Martínez is going to be sidelined for an extended period. Additionally, Amorim pointed out the necessity to be "cautious" with Luke Shaw following Shaw's most recent setback.

During the latter part of Sunday's 2 - 0 home defeat to Crystal Palace, Martínez was tearfully carried off the pitch on a stretcher. On Thursday morning, the club officially announced his severe knee injury.

On the injury to one of his key players, Amorim said: Licha is a difficult situation, he’s going to be out for a while, we don’t know the extent of the injury, but it’s going to take time.

United's injury woes worsened during the week when it was revealed Shaw had suffered another injury. The 29-year-old has played just three times for United this season, while his last start came almost 12 months ago.

Luke has one small issue in the different area from the last injury, so we try to be careful with Luke."

With both Martínez and Shaw absent for Friday's FA Cup fourth round clash with Leicester City, new signings Patrick Dorgu and Ayden Heaven could be in line for debuts, but Amorim kept his cards close to his chest.

He said: "We’ll see, you guys have to wait until tomorrow but they are ready to play and are two more solutions in this moment."

On the subject of Marcus Rashford, the United boss asked for questions to be redirected to his counterpart at Aston Villa, stating: "Marcus is in Birmingham now with Unai (Emery), so you can the questions to another coach. We are just focused on our players."

While United were linked with a loan move for Mathys Tel and other forwards, they ended the window without replacing Rashford or Antony in their frontline, largely due to PSR concerns.

However, Amorim is well aware of the situation, and knows United must change after years of poor recruitment and financial mismanagement.

"What I feel is that the club is taking its time, we know the urgency of the moment of the team, everybody here don’t want to make the same mistakes of the past, in the summer we will see. But like I said, we are being really careful with transfers because we did some mistakes in the past."

United will be looking to win just their fourth home game from nine under the Portuguese coach when they take on club legend, and recent interim, Ruud van Nistelrooy at Old Trafford.