Raphael Varane injury record shows Manchester United transfer risk this week

By now Raphael Varane should be closing in on a hundred games for Manchester United. Instead, Saturday was just his 66th for the club and who knows when the 67th will arrive.

The French centre-back misses around one game for every two that he plays since his £42million move for Real Madrid and the concern is his absences are unpredictable, rather than having spent months on the sideline recovering from one specific injury.

He was withdrawn at half-time during the successful comeback against Nottingham Forest on Saturday and while United wait for scans to determine the extent of the injury, there is a chance Varane will be sidelined for the ninth time in a little over two seasons since moving to Old Trafford.

Those absences have seen him miss 32 games for the club so far, according to Transfermarkt, and he has suffered from problems as varied as hamstring, groin, knee and ankle. There are unspecified muscle injuries in there as well, something that first began cropping up regularly in 2016/17 when he was still at Real Madrid.

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Varane has only recently turned 30 and shouldn't be suffering from injuries to the extent that he is doing. It can also become a mental issue as much as a physical one, where every tweak and twinge sets the internal alarm bells ringing. Maybe that was the case on Saturday, but it's clear Erik ten Hag is sweating on his fitness ahead of the toughest game of the season so far this weekend, away at Arsenal.

The amount of football he had to play was a factor in Varane's decision to retire from international football at the age of 29, when he was just seven caps short of a century for France.

"I gave everything, physically and mentally,"