Manchester United: Marcos Rojo to face Ajax reserves in a bid to return to first-team

Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal has revealed that defender Marcos Rojo will be amongst other fringe players to turn out for the United reserves against Ajax's reserve team on Thursday, 27 August.

The Argentine defender has not featured for United this season, his last competitive game coming for his country in the final of the 2015 Copa America, which they lost to Chile. He was said to join his teammates during their pre-season tour of the United States, but failed to do so due to passport problems.

He has since returned to the club and has been in training in order to get back his match sharpness, but is yet to feature in any of United's four competitive games this campaign. The Dutch manager has been deploying Daley Blind at the heart of United's defence alongside Chris Smalling, which has paid dividends as the 20-time English champions are yet to concede a goal after three rounds of the Premier League campaign.

Van Gaal has left behind many players, some of who are on the cusp of a regular spot in the first-team, as the rest of the squad travel to Bruges, for the second-leg of their Champions League qualifier against Club Brugge. Andreas Pereira, James Wilson, Antonio Valencia and Jonny Evans along with goalkeeping outcasts David de Gea, Victor Valdes and Anders Lindegaard are some of the players, who could feature for the United U21 side against their Eredivisie counterparts.

The manager believes that the only way for first-team players to make it back into the senior squad is to prove their fitness by playing for the second string, a practice followed by the Dutch manager even during the previous campaign. "The only way is to play matches in the second team, because that's the first step to come back, so now seven or eight players have to play Ajax's second team on Thursday, because they also need to play 90 minutes. And Rojo shall play 60 minutes," Van Gaal is quoted as saying by the Manchester Evening News.