Manchester United Block A Player From Going On International Duty And Their Manager Is Furious

Manchester United have blocked Anthony Elanga from going on Sweden duty and manager Janne Andersson is furious.

Elanga has featured twice under United interim manager Ralf Rangnick since his arrival last month, coming off the bench against Crystal Palace and starting against Young Boys respectively.

The 19-year-old is a top prospect and was in line to join up with Sweden as part of a 24-man squad to tour Portugal in January.

United will reportedly prevent Elanga from doing so and it's left Andersson unhappy.

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He explained per The Sun: "We would have liked to have had Anthony on the January tour.

"At the same time it is very funny that he has started to get playing time at Manchester United.

"We will continue to follow Anthony closely in the future."

Elanga has made eight appearances for Sweden U21s but is yet to debut for the full international team.

Sweden are yet to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar with their semi-final play-off against the Czech Republic coming in March.

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Elsewhere, Elanga stayed on the bench on Saturday as United ran out 1-0 winners over Norwich City.

Bottom side Norwich proved to be tricky customers, with David de Gea making a number of great saves from Teemu Pukki and Ozan Kabak.

United themselves weren't as intense as they were against Palace and failed to create much going forward.

However, Max Aarons dragged down Cristiano Ronaldo in the box to give away a penalty.

Ronaldo stepped up and smashed past Tim Krul to earn all three points.

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"At half-time, I told the boys we needed to increase the speed and intensity of the game," Rangnick said post-match.

"The second half was a little bit better but at the end we were lucky to have a clean sheet.

"The second half, I was not at all happy with the amount of corners that we gave away, but we got the three points.

"We have conceded the highest amount of goals in the top ten. Now we have two clean sheets which is good but we still need to improve on that away, especially against physical teams or teams that attack high like Norwich did."

United are now up to fifth in the table, level on points with West Ham United who are yet to play this weekend.

Topics: Football, Manchester United, Premier League, England

Daniel Marland

Daniel is a journalist for SPORTbible and he has previous experience with Manchester United. He has spoken to some of the biggest names in sport including Rio Ferdinand, Peter Crouch, WWE COO Triple H and WWE legend The Undertaker. May or may not do a decent impression of Jamie Carragher.

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