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Red Devils flight forced down

Cape Town - An aeroplane carrying part of the Manchester United squad to Beijing was forced to make an emergency landing due to inclement weather on Saturday night.

The Red Devils are in China to take part in the International Challenge Cup and they suffered a 4-1 defeat to Borussia Dortmund in their first match on Friday in Shanghai.

Jose Mourinho's side will face neighbours Manchester City on Monday, although heavy rains and flooding in the Chinese capital have threatened to prevent the pre-season derby from going ahead.

United winger Memphis Depay revealed on Twitter that bad weather forced their flight down and he posted a video of himself, an air stewardess and the captain talking about the situation.

"We're lost somewhere. We had to make a quick landing. We tried to fly Beijing but the weather is a little bit bad so we had to land somewhere else," Depay said.

"Now we're waiting until the weather gets a little bit easier so we can land. I hope we can leave soon so we can prepare ourselves for the game against Manchester City."

Mourinho said that the flight finally arrived at its intended destination in the early hours of Sunday morning.

"We were supposed to fly with two different planes, with half of us in one plane and half in the other," the United manager told a press conference on Sunday.

"The ones in the first plane was lucky because we landed safely and were in the hotel to have dinner. The second group was unlucky. The plane was not good.

"They had to make an unscheduled landing for a couple of hours, and then they arrived in the hotel to have dinner at one o'clock in the morning. But they had it with a smile on their faces which is good."

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