Erik ten Hag explains why Antony starts over Amad for Manchester United vs Burnley

Erik ten Hag has explained why he has named an unchanged Manchester United side against Burnley, with Antony playing over Amad Diallo once again.

United are aiming for back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time since mid-February.

Erik ten Hag’s side were dominant against Sheffield United during their 4-2 victory, with Bruno Fernandes standing out during that encounter.

Antony was brought off early in the second half against Chris Wilder’s side after United went 2-1 behind. Amad replaced the Brazilian and had a solid game.

The Ivorian has had multiple impressive performances from the bench, including during the FA Cup quarter-final win over Liverpool, where he scored the dramatic 121st-minute winner.

However, Ten Hag has once again decided against including the 21-year-old in the lineup and he has suggested that he has made no changes because he wants to develop more routines within the team.

“That’s one of the reasons why we stay the same, to bring those routines in,” he told club media.

“But also, we have to take an eye on the load of the players. Scott McTominay is not fit for 90 minutes. Definitely can play for a half or 30 minutes, but we have to manage the game load.”

Ten Hag has regularly spoken about how the injury troubles at the club have impacted the routines he wants his players to have.

Yet, against a relegation-threatened Burnley, they should not be needing a perfect environment to pick up three points.

Speaking on the opposition, Ten Hag added: “They play very aggressively, very on the front foot, very one-vs-one over the whole pitch, so as a team, we have to deal with that, we have to be very compact, we have to battle them.

“[I want] to win, and always a clean sheet, of course, but we have to work on that. We have to be better out of posession work has to be better. What is very good at this moment is our goal-scoring; we’ve scored a lot of goals.

“We’re very dynamic, very attractive, and we’ve scored a lot of goals because we have a lot of high-quality players on the pitch.