Now Jose is set to axe his flops after tough love fails to spur them on
JOSE MOURINHO is considering swinging the axe at Manchester United after his Old Trafford career reached its lowest ebb following a goalless draw against Crystal Palace in which he accused some of his players of lacking heart.
Mourinho was downbeat after a lacklustre performance which made a mockery of his pre-match target of climbing into the top four by the end of the year.
His tough love, calling out the mentality of four of his players Marcus Rashford, Luke Shaw, Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard, also backfired and they may now be at risk alongside £89million record signing Paul Pogba, substituted yesterday, Alexis Sanchez and Romelu Lukaku, who has gone 11 games without a goal.
‘What is the solution?’ said Mourinho. ‘I cannot change players’ natures dramatically. The solution is that probably I have to make certain choices based on heart and then probably I will blame myself because I will think heart is not enough and I am missing some quality. It is a bad result. We moved Crystal Palace to the sides very well by analysing the opponents but there was not enough intensity, not enough desire.’
Given Mourinho’s recent state of war against the ‘soft’ modern footballer, he also appeared to question how badly it will hurt some of his squad to have a poor result.
‘Every individual is different. There are people who have a bad dinner, there
are people who will enjoy a nice dinner and there will even be people that will party. I am what I am,’ he said.
But Mourinho insisted his work in the build-up to the game was right. ‘We did the most difficult things apart from scoring because we found the spaces to play against a team that marked very tightly,’ he said. ‘I was happy at the beginning of the game because I saw our training, knowing that Wilfried Zaha doesn’t defend the space behind him.
‘But we didn’t have the intensity that is basically related to your brain, with your heart. If we play with the same philosophy against Young Boys [on Tuesday in the Champions League] then we don’t win and we have to go to Valencia to win to qualify.
‘Of course there is frustration but what can you do when there is a match in two days? There is not a long time to be mourning because on Sunday there is training.’