Darren Fletcher has been speaking to the media ahead of Sunday’s FA Cup tie against Brighton at Old Trafford. Will Mazraoui or Mbeumo be available? With Cameroon playing Morocco today, Fletcher was first asked whether either Bryan Mbeumo or Noussair Mazraoui would play on Sunday. “I don’t think so,” he replied. “I think it’s too close a turnaround. So we’ll have the same players available for the game as we had against Burnley, so no new additions. And yeah, Brian and Nouss will be not available for the game.” Fletcher was then asked “how important is it to have an FA cup run?” He replied: “And this competition, that’s an important competition. Interesting that it’s about winning trophies and I think we’ve had good success in the competition in recent years. Won it a couple years ago, lost in the final. It’s, it’s an amazing competition. It’s the first trophy that I won as a player. It’s a special tournament and, you know, as in with the season so far, not in Europe, out of the League Cup, Premier League, obviously. But it’s the FA Cup’s a trophy that we should be vying to win and giving ourselves every opportunity to win.” Kobbie Mainoo’s future The Scot was then asked if he’d had chance to speak to Kobbie Mainoo about his future and how he is in himself. “He seems in a good place,” Fletcher replied. “Kobbie doesn’t give you much, so you wouldn’t know if he was in a good place or not so good. He’s like that. That’s his natural way. But I know him well and I’ve known him for a long time and I’ve seen him around the building and around throughout the season. Not so much about the building, but you see people around and I’ve had conversations with him in general, but he’s in a good place.” “I know Kobbie and I think he knows me and he knows Travis Binnion, so he’s comfortable with his environment. So he’s in a good place. He’s trained well and as I said, he’s hard to read Kobbie, so that remains to be seen.” The next question was about Harry Maguire’s fitness. “Well, he has been out for a while, so it’d be probably looking at his load and things like that,” he answered. “That decision’s not been made. But I think, like, we’ve seen the players coming back the other night. You’ve seen Mason, you’ve seen Kobbie, you’ve seen Bruno. There has to be some understanding of their first minutes. Might have to be careful a little bit with that process to build back in. So I think Harry will probably be in that situation for the weekend.” On the Academy and Amorim’s comments The next reporter mentioned Shea Lacey’s great impact from the bench on tuesday and asked “it felt like it was an issue maybe towards the end of Ruben’s time. Obviously, there was the mention of Chido and Harry and the entitled mention in his press conference. You’ve seen a lot of them with the under-18s and working in the academy. What’s your view of how the academy is working here and how players are developing, I guess, in terms of ability and character and attitude and things like that?” Fletcher replied: “I just think, historically, this club is built around the academy, we’ve got an amazing academy. Our record speaks for itself. I’m not going to stand here and say anything other than that. We’ve got an amazing record. I think it’s hard to beat in terms of the history of clubs around the world. I think we’ve got some amazing players, some amazing talents. I think what I see is a lot of hard, working, humble young players who aren’t perfect because they’re young and they’re learning and they’ve got a lot to do.” “I think we ask and expect too much of young people sometimes in society and in general. And that’s not a criticism of anybody. That’s just my belief. I think we have to let them learn, educate them, help them, understand they’re going to make mistakes, and they’re going to do things that will frustrate you. But through time, with good guidance of coaches, family members, players in the first-team squad, all of us play a part. That’s our role. That’s our jobs of developing them to be Manchester United players and Manchester United people.” “So all I can say is my workings with those players as individuals, and in general throughout the academy, I deal with hard-working, honest, coachable, super talented kids. And we’ve got a lot of talent in our academy, and hopefully, they can showcase themselves like Shea did when he came on against Burnley and came so close to scoring a fantastic goal.” The next question was: “Speaking on Wednesday night after the match about the fact that you’re learning about the confidence levels of the players, particularly when it comes to not holding on to that lead. What have you done this week to try and restore that confidence? What techniques have you used? Is it meetings? Is it showing them videos of the past? How have you tried to do that?” The interim coach responded: “It’s just feedback. It’s just talking to them. It’s just trying to paint the picture of what to expect, not to deal with this, how to deal with disappointments in games, how to see out different situations in games. It’s been not a lot of time to practice it. So video, we reviewed the game against Burnley, and there’s some key details in that that we’ll try and improve on. I think it’s a constant thing that evolves over time for me. It’s conversations, it’s video, it’s coaching on the training ground, it’s learning from new experiences that happened within the game and growing and building as a team and developing confidence and going on a run where you deal with those situations.” “But handling disappointment in football is everything, on and off the pitch, different situations in the game. And it’s recognizing and understanding that you’ve got 90 minutes to rectify things and nothing’s going to be perfect. I think people are striving for perfection. Football is about chance, luck, opportunities, different things happen. Look at the game the other night. We concede one shot on goal, another shot off target, and we draw 2-2. But that’s football. We have a disallowed goal, which is unfortunate. Things happen in football. You’ve got to be able to deal with them constantly and just keep believing, while there’s 90 minutes on the clock, that you can change it around.” Kyle Walker and Patrick Dorgu He was then asked for his reaction to Burnley’s Kyle Walker stamping on patrick Dorgu on Tuesday, which was missed by the referee and the VAR. The reporter asked “Patrick, probably, admirably, didn’t react. But we’re in a situation where the players are actually feeling they maybe need to react to get the referee and the VAR’s attention. Because had he done, had he milked that moment or rolled around, he probably would have ended up getting… Or Kyle Walker would have probably ended up being sent off.” Fletcher agreed. “So like Kyle Walker did when Licha didn’t touch him! Yeah, that’s the territory we’re getting into this now. But Patrick’s such an honest guy. He’s never going to do that. It didn’t look great from Kyle Walker’s point of view, but I like Kyle and I know him as a person, so I hope the intent was to get the ball. Patrick thought his intention at the time was Kyle trying to get the ball and make contact with him. So that was his understanding of the incident in the moment.” “For me personally, I think VAR should have looked at it. They looked at the goal disallowed, which was ridiculous. So they should have been looking at that for me. And as you say, if they don’t, you’re just going to encourage players making massive dramas out of things and being theatrical, which is what we don’t want in the game. I don’t want that from my players. I’d strive my players not to do it. But them two situations probably were massive influences on the game the other night, so it shows you how influential it can be.” Finally he was asked if he has talked with Sir Jim Ratcliffe about his “vision” for United and about Fletcher’s own future. “I’ve not, no,” he said. “And again, the process here, I speak to Omar and Jason. That’s how the processes work. For me, I’ve been focussing on the job in hand, preparing the team for these two games. There’s been no thoughts or conversations about my future. Honestly, the people in Jason, Omar have given me full responsibility to take control of these two games, make my own decisions, lead the team, guide the team, prepare the team, and that’s what I’ve been doing. There’s been no conversations with anybody outside of those two people in higher up positions in the club.” The embargoed section of the press conference will be available here from around 10.30pm tomorrow. Featured image Carl Recine via Getty Images The Peoples Person has been one of the world’s leading Man United news sites for over a decade. Follow us on Bluesky: @peoplesperson.bsky.social Red Billy Red Billy is the managing editor of The Peoples Person, author of three books and two magazines and totally obsessed with football’s transfer market. Billy first saw United live in 1971, watching George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, before becoming a League Match ticket book holder from 1975/76 and a writer since 1995. Billy still insists Matteo Darmian and Alex Telles could have made it at United given half a chance.
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