After Simeone u-turn
club this season. Mourinho clashed with Antonio Conte during his team’s defeats at Stamford Bridge last month and in October, when he accused his Chelsea counterpart of “humiliating” him with his touchline antics at the end of a 4-0 thumping.
Mourinho also hit back at Chelsea fans who had taunted him with chants of “Judas” during United’s 3-1 FA Cup quarter-final defeat.
“You say that word emotion,” Mourinho said. “For me, it is just a game. One more game. No difference for me, not at all.” Mourinho also claimed that Juan Mata would not be fit again until “the end of May”.
Luke Shaw claims he has seen a “massive change” in himself and believes he has started “fully turning the corner” after accepting he was not working hard enough in the wake of clear-the-air talks with Mourinho.
“Now it is my time to fight until the end of the season and show the boss what I can do and what I can bring to help his team,” he said. here were times in my career when the games would stack up at the end of the season, when every match seemed to have so much riding on it, when the pressure was relentless, and it was then that you discovered who had the mentality to keep going.
It is much the same now for Manchester United, who will have arrived back from Brussels in the early hours of yesterday already thinking about how they recover in the two days they have to prepare for the visit of Chelsea tomorrow.
I have been there many times before as a player, with a league title to win at home and a European campaign to take care of midweek, and while the stakes are lower for United this season in terms of trophies, the pressure is still there.
There is no question that the run of games facing United is punishing. The second leg against Anderlecht comes on Thursday and then they go to Turf Moor next Sunday for another difficult league game against Burnley. Only then can they turn their attention to the Manchester derby four days later and, when you look at it as a whole, then the programme can seem overwhelming.
Sir Alex Ferguson was a meticulous planner when it came to navigating a run of tough fixtures. He would build the picture up slowly. What kind of team could he expect to beat Anderlecht on Thursday? Who could he afford to rest for that match? Who could he not do without against Chelsea?
Over the years there would be a core of players in each team who would play virtually every game – the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, atching the reports of the Borussia Dortmund pipe-bomb attack, it feels like a long time since those days when players were so readily accessible to fans. When I started as a professional, we would come out of Manchester United’s old training ground at the Cliff in Wayne Rooney, Nemanja Vidic, Patrice Evra – but there were also plenty of us whom he rested.
I remember Sir Alex telling me once that he had a game in mind for me, and explaining what it was he wanted in that match. As I listened I started thinking through our fixture list. “But that game’s in two weeks’ time,” I said. He was not concerned with that. It was his job to think a long way ahead.
It is no different for this United team. They can be overwhelmed by the number of games coming up, by the injuries in defence that leave Marcos Rojo and Eric Bailly as the only two fit centre-halves, or they can use the momentum of a good result to get them going. We always felt that if we won the big games then the mood in the stadium changed. Beat Chelsea and Old Trafford will be bouncing when Anderlecht arrive on Thursday.
There is very little scope at this time for the players to train. The only sessions have to be short and sharp. Individuals have to be responsible for making sure they are rested and ready. That means plenty of sleep, taking their ice baths, getting their treatment, drinking their protein shakes. This is when you demonstrate to your manager your professionalism and push through to get the job done. You can rest in the summer but the last few weeks of the Salford and there would be supporters waiting for us in the car park to get autographs.
By the end of my career the security measures had changed immeasurably, especially when we were on pre-season tour. In 2009 the club cancelled a visit to Jakarta because there was a bomb attack there a few days before we were due to arrive. Even now when I go to watch United with my mates there are car checks going into Old Trafford. I suppose people will say what happened in Dortmund will be a wake-up call, but security around football has been a major operation for years already.