Allardyce: Players the ones to blame

JOSE Mourinho should not be held responsible for United’s failings against Tottenham, according to Sam Allardyce.

The former England manager says stats prove there has been a clear improvement under Mourinho, and United were ‘unlucky’ to even lose against Spurs - let alone by three goals.

Allardyce does not believe Mourinho could have done much more to inspire victory on Monday night, and he feels the players let their manager down.

“I’ll tell you the stats and why Manchester United were so good,” Allardyce said. “The stats were 57 per cent possession, 23 shots, five on target, Tottenham 43pc possession, nine shots and five on target. It’s only about Tottenham’s finishing that got them the victory, normally that result would never, never happen.

“So, is it a freak result, or not?, when you’ve had 23 shots at your own place [Old Trafford], and you’ve not scored, that’s not the manager’s fault as he’s set his team to go out and attack, they’ve gone and attacked, they’ve created enough chances to win comfortably, they’ve failed to take those chances and they ended up getting sucker-punched by what in the end was pretty poor defending.

“It’s alright saying it’s a disaster – yes it is, it’s 3-0, but if you are a manager you’d say to your players at the end of the day ‘cut the silly mistakes out, keep getting this possession rating, keep getting this shot rating and we’ll win far more games than we’ll lose.”