Mourinho places build-up top of a long list of excuses
Jose Mourinho claimed Manchester City had “everything nice and easy” in the run-up to the derby and none of the problems his Manchester United side faced as he reeled off a series of excuses for a defeat that dealt a fresh blow to the club’s top-four hopes.
The United manager blamed the mistakes that led to City’s goals on mental and physical fatigue caused by two taxing away matches to Bournemouth and Juventus and also decried the loss of Paul Pogba to injury on the eve of the game.
Defeat left United seven points adrift of Tottenham in fourth and 12 points behind leaders City and means they have kept just one clean sheet in 12 league matches.
But Mourinho sought to deflect attention by bemoaning United’s schedule and fitness problems in contrast to City, who had played three successive home matches against Fulham, Southampton and Shakhtar Donetsk going into the derby, during which time they scored 14 goals. He described the latter two matches as “friendlies”.
“It was a week where Manchester City played at home three matches, and we play three matches away,” said Mourinho, who sarcastically declared that United were “not going to be relegated” after it was pointed out they are closer to 18th-placed Cardiff than Pep Guardiola’s side in the table.
“A week where they enjoy 6-0, 6-1 victories, relaxed, no pressure, no mental effort, everything nice and easy, and we played two matches away, difficult ones, where the second one [against Juventus] was like a final for us against one of the best teams in Europe, a game that demanded from us everything we had to give, not just physically but also mentally.
“So I consider the performance of my team a performance with mistakes, it is different than a bad performance. We made mistakes and were punished. But the performance, the togetherness, fight until the end was something we are building and we are not going to lose that because of a defeat.”
Mourinho cited Luke Shaw’s loss of concentration for City’s first goal as an example of mental fatigue. “A kid that made a mistake for the first goal is playing so, so, so, so well and last season he was playing one match every three months and in this moment he is playing every game for 90 minutes, so when I speak about physical fatigue, mental fatigue that leads to mistakes, that’s what I mean,” Mourinho said.
“The game against Juventus was hard from the physical and mental point of view but I am with my players and even with my players that today made mistakes that led to goals. We are together, we are not going to be affected by this.”
Pogba missed training on Friday and Saturday due to injury and Mourinho said the problem would prevent the midfielder featuring for France in the international break.
“I don’t like to lose a game and speak about this player or that player that was not [available] but it was important for us in many aspects of the game because we had to play [Marouane] Fellaini and he was not ready for 90 minutes.
“I can just imagine, when the result was 2-1, to bring a fresh Fellaini to the pitch, I think they [City] would be in big, big trouble. But when the result was 2-1 and we had that final push Fellaini was making an incredible effort to stay on the pitch, not fresh at all. For different reasons we missed Paul but that doesn’t mean with Paul we would win the game, so it is not an excuse.”