For now, Jose Mourinho has taken the high road. So he says.
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Speaking ahead of Manchester United’s trip to title contenders, and his former club, Chelsea, on Sunday (Watch live, 11:30 a.m. ET on NBCSN and online via NBCSports.com), Mourinho believes his side would be getting more credit if he had complained more about recent injuries.
Despite United sitting second in the Premier League table 10 weeks into the season, his side have been heavily criticized for defensive displays in recent weeks.
Mourinho says he doesn’t complain about injuries as much as other managers and that’s probably why his team are getting plenty of criticism.“It’s my fault because I should cry every week about our injuries and remind everybody, day after day or press conference after press conference,” Mourinho said. “So it’s my fault. It’s my decision. It’s my way of dealing with problems. It’s my way of trying to motivate and respect and give confidence to the players that are going to replace those people. But maybe I have to reconsider my profile. I know that I moan about a lot of things but I don’t with injuries and probably I should.
“I think any other manager would be speaking about Pogba every day. ‘Oh, I don’t have Pogba. Oh, when will I have Pogba? Oh, 10 matches without Pogba. Oh, all the Champions League group phase without Pogba. Oh, all the big matches, against Liverpool, against Chelsea, against Spurs without Pogba. Oh.’ I don’t speak about Pogba one single time. It’s only when you ask me about his situation. And it’s not just Pogba. It’s Pogba, it’s Fellaini, it’s Carrick, it’s Ibra, it’s Marcos Rojo. It’s a big group of players. So I think we are doing very, very well.”
Does he have a point?
Hmmm. This is a tough one. Mourinho has definitley mentioned injuries to Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marouane Fellaini in previous press conferences. What about his rivals?
Manchester City have had to deal with a season-ending injury to Benjamin Mendy, Vincent Kompany out for most of the campaign and a few games without Sergio Aguero. Pep Guardiola’s men have coped just fine but he has mentioned their absentees on a few occasions.
Chelsea have had multiple absentees across their squad this season (Eden Hazard, Alvaro Morata and N’Golo Kante among them) and there have been a few rumblings from Antonio Conte during their up and down start to the campaign.
Liverpool have been missing Adam Lallana and Nathaniel Clyne for all of the season so far, plus Philippe Coutinho and Sadio Mane have been out injured for spells. Jurgen Klopp has certainly pointed towards those injuries for some poor displays from the Reds.
The timing of these comments from Mourinho is somewhat expected.
Heading into the final international break of 2017, he knows the likes of Fellaini, Pogba, Rojo and even Ibrahimovic will return within the next few weeks. When they return to full fitness he can have no excuses.
Until then, he will keep reminding us just how good United were early in the season before they were struck by a raft of injuries he doesn’t want to talk about.“I really think that you and the specialists know the football that we were playing at the beginning of the season,” Mourinho told the media. “You know. Now you pretend that you don’t know. Now you pretend that we never played amazing football, that we never scored lots of goals, that we never scored amazing goals. That we never had our midfield players and our defenders arriving in the opposition box and scoring goals and creating chances.
“I know that you know that. You just pretend, because it’s convenient for you to pretend that these things didn’t exist. But they exist. And we miss our players, of course we miss our players. And we have to play big matches without them, and we are probably going to play one more without them again.”Follow @JPW_NBCSports
