Mourinho bemoans United’s luck as injury woes mount
JOSE Mourinho believes that Manchester United’s recent malaise can be put down to plain bad luck and refused to lay any blame at the door of his players after a third draw in as many Premier League games.
After sharing the points against Leicester City and Burnley over the festive period, United were held to another stalemate by Mauricio Pellegrino’s stubborn Southampton on Saturday.
Yet more dropped points meant Mourinho’s side fell out of the top two for the first time this season and, ahead of this evening’s trip to Everton, the gap between United and league leaders Manchester City continues to widen.
United appear to have lost their way since suffering defeat against City in the Manchester derby earlier this month, having taken just nine points from a possible 15 in the time since.
Following Saturday’s 0-0 draw, Mourinho claimed that a combination of injuries and contentious refereeing decisions — particularly three penalty calls in the meetings with City, Leicester and Southampton — are at the root of his team’s recent troubles.
“I feel unlucky, yes,” he said. “But when unlucky in football, you have to chase, which is what we try to do.
“When I speak about three big decisions, three penalties in matches where a penalty and a possible goal makes a huge difference, I want to say unlucky because it’s what I feel.
“I could be here now with a ‘bias’ theory but I’m not at all because honestly I’m happy with the referees’ performances in these matches,” the United manager insisted.
“These were just unlucky decisions. You have to be biased against us to say that the penalty against City, against Leicester and Southampton were not penalties.”
The United manager added: “Three draws are different from three defeats. I know the difference between three draws and three defeats. The difference is just three points but the difference in terms of the mental state of a defeat and draw makes a difference.
“We need to improve the results, not the ‘globality’ of the performance. These last two matches at home, if I forget the big mistake of the first Burnley goal, the team was solid, the team played well, the team tried to play all the time.
“I’m happy with that quality, with that spirit.”
Mourinho will have to go without either of his senior centre-forwards for the trip to Good- ison after both Romelu Lukaku and Zlatan Ibrahimovic suffered injury setbacks in quick succession.
Ibrahimovic has been ruled out for a month after a recurrence of the serious knee ligament injury which almost ended his career last season. The 36-year-old striker only recently returned having spent seven months on the sidelines.
Lukaku, meanwhile, was stretchered off in the opening stages of the draw with Southampton after a clash of heads with defender Wesley Hoedt. The Belgian required a neck brace and an oxygen mask after the collision and is also likely to miss Friday’s FA Cup third round tie with Derby County.
“The boys are trying. We have lots of problems in the team. We lost Lukaku, we lost Ibrahimovic for a month and to lose him for a month means that he stops his run to recovery. He is running for many many months and in a period where what he needs is to play and to have minutes, we lose him for a month. Then we lose Lukaku, I don’t know for how long.
“So we have problems, we have difficulties now to rotate players. I think the fact that we don’t play EFL Cup semi-finals is a good thing for us because we have no players to play these two possible extra matches in January.
“Now we have to cope with Everton and Derby County, then after that an open space of nine or 10 days before Stoke City. Hopefully in this period we can rest, we can work, we can recover some players to attack the second part of the season. We finish the year in third and we have to fight to improve our position.” Ω ASHLEY Young will miss Manchester United’s next three matches after accepting a violent conduct charge.
The 32-year-old was cited after he appeared to elbow Dusan Tadic during Saturday’s match against Southampton and will now sit out today’s trip to Everton, Friday’s FA Cup clash with Derby County and the Premier League meeting with Stoke City on January 15.
The Football Association decided to take action after footage emerged of Young landing a blow on Tadic’s stomach area during the goalless draw at Old Trafford.
An FA statement read: “Young’s charge follows an incident during Saturday’s game against Southampton which was not seen by the match officials but caught on video.”