United’s clash with Zorya in danger due to ice-covered pitch

Manchester United's crunch Europa League clash with Zorya Luhansk is under threat due to a frozen pitch that Jose Mourinho claims his team should never have had to encounter.

United manager Mourinho believes Uefa should not make teams play on frozen pitches like the one in Ukraine where his team’s fate in the group stage will be sealed.

A point will be enough to see United go through from Group A to the last 32, while Zorya are already out of the competition but they restricted United to a 1-0 win at Old Trafford, playing on the kind of surface they can only dream of.

The Chornomorets Stadium pitch is frozen in places and patchy in others. United defender Daley Blind said it was "like a rock" when going out to train and team-mate Paul Pogba laughed.

The players’ studs clacked on the surface that led Mourinho to question why European governing body Uefa allows final group matches to be played in countries where winters hit so hard.

“The pitch is very hard, the pitch is very icy,” the United boss said. “I think Uefa know the conditions of the pitch and everybody knows that in mid-December the conditions in Ukraine and Eastern Europe are more difficult.

“So if Uefa was worried about it, they should change the fixtures and not allow the last fixtures to be played in mid-December.

“If the fifth fixture is the last fixture here, it would be the end of November and not mid-December, so I think that’s the problem.

“I think the stadium is beautiful, it’s new, it’s well taken care of.

“The pitch is the same. They are trying, they are putting some warmth on the top of it, but the pitch is very difficult and people cannot make miracles. Let’s hope everything goes well.”

A routine pitch inspection is planned for 10am local time (8am GMT) on Thursday.

One Zorya official was confident the match would go ahead, pointing to temperatures being forecast to rise above zero before the game and the ongoing work with heating on the pitch.

United trained on 70 per cent of the playing surface in temperatures that dipped to minus eight Celsius, having agreed the area in the shade of the stands would remain covered.

It is not the first time United have had problems with a pitch since Mourinho’s arrival. In July, the Bird’s Nest quagmire cost them a money-spinning pre-season friendly against Manchester City in Beijing.

Much more is at stake in Ukraine given progress is on the line in the Europa League — a competition that sees the winner through to the Champions League.

United are already nine points off the top four in the Premier League, meaning their prospects of reaching the Champions League that way already look slim, but Mourinho says that has not heightened the importance of this competition.

“No, we go in the same direction,” the Portuguese manager said.

“We assumed from the beginning that it was an important competition for us — difficult because we play Thursdays and then we play Sundays.

“We are never given a Monday match to have one more day to rest and prepare, so it is difficult.

“It’s a difficult competition to play together with the rest of the competitions.

“But we want to try to win it and while we are in the competition we try to win it.

“Today we are in the competition, tomorrow we want to win it and we want to go to the knockout (stage) and we want to try and go as far as possible, step by step.

“The first step is a difficult one, which is to qualify from a very difficult group.”

Henrikh Mkhitaryan knows better than most what to expect in Odessa having enjoyed a successful stint in Ukraine at Shakhtar Donetsk.

The 27-year-old playmaker is confident of progress but does not think the Europa League is necessarily United’s best chance of reaching the Champions League.

“It’s always good to be here in Ukraine,” Mkhitaryan said before training in minus seven Celsius. “I have very good memories of my time here.

“I had four amazing years playing in the Ukraine and my last game I played in Odessa was a very good one for me because I scored my first hat-trick for Shakhtar, so I can say I am pleased to be here again.

“We didn’t give up in the Premier League yet, so we are not saying we are out of the competition.

“We are still in the competition, there are a lot of games to play so we are trying to do our best to be in the top four and of course in the Europa League we are going to try and go as far as we can.”