Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal, has said he is not interested in whether Radamel Falcao is happy at being benched or not and confirmed the striker won’t start Monday”s game away to Southampton.
Falcao has hardly played for the Old Trafford outfit, since he completed a one-year loan move and has scored only once. The 28-year-old suffered a calf injury in October and since his return, Van Gaal has used him from the bench.
When asked if the Colombian will start at St Mary’s, he replied: “I’m not interested. He has to follow my philosophy. Do you understand that? Yeah, I’m here because of that.”
Asked if it was down to a lack of fitness, Van Gaal said: “Yes, match fitness. He has trained now maybe two days after the match [with Hull]. So we had the match against Stoke on Tuesday when he played for 15 minutes. Then we had the training sessions after Tuesday. And before Tuesday I didn’t train – I trained the box exercise. You know the box exercise? Yeah? It is not a training session.
“We had to play again within two days after the Hull City game, then I have to recover the players. Then I cannot train him. After Tuesday I can train him. And we have trained very well on Wednesday. Then Thursday they are off. I can say to him to train but, no, we have trained before that.
“Then on Friday we had a training session. So he has trained in two training sessions. But a bigger contribution is to play in the second team for 45 or 60 minutes or even 90 minutes – what Jonny Evans has done already. But I cannot do that because I need him because [Wayne] Rooney was injured [for Stoke]. James Wilson was injured also [for Hull]. I have to adapt to the needs of the selection. Then I selected him in spite of the fact he can only play 20 minutes at that level because the rhythm of the game in the Premier League is the highest.”
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