JOSE:I GAVEMY LIFE TO UNITED

Mourinho expects a warm welcome back to Old Trafford but admits it may soon be tougher to win over his own players

JOSE MOURINHO is expecting a warm welcome on his return to Old Trafford - but fears soon he might not be so popular with his own players.

Mourinho takes Tottenham to his former club tomorrow having issued a reminder that he won two trophies with Manchester United and guided them to a second-place finish.

“The fans, they know I gave everything I could,” said the Spurs boss. “I won what was possible to win, I didn’t win what wasn’t possible to win. I gave everything, I gave my life to the club and my professionalism, like I always do,”

“Internally, lots of friends for life, lots of amazing people I met in the club. I only have good feelings, feelings I will have to forget in 90 minutes because for 90 minutes they want to win, I want to win, that’s football.”

This will be Tottenham’s eighth game in a gruelling 22day run of fixtures.

But despite the schedule, they still have a log jam of players, with a top-heavy squad and just three days left of the transfer window.

Spurs have yet to find Danny Rose a new club, doubts remain over Dele Alli and they want to strength en th eir defence, which leaves Mourinho fearing that unless some players are shipped out, he could be left with an unhappy camp. He said: “For sure, we’re not going to keep every player in the squad over normal numbers.

“I like to work normally with a squad of 22 players plus the keepers, and we’re not going to be far from that number.

“But my job isn’t to keep them happy. My job is to do the best for the club and to get the best possible results.

“But I agree it’s impossible to keep everybody happy when you have so many players. At the same time, we’re a big club, we want to be bigger, we want to play in all the competitions.”

Mourinho is relishing the prospect of a rest after the trip to Manchester. It would have been easy for the fixture pileup to have overwhelmed Spurs and for them to have gone out of Europe and the Carabao Cup.

Instead , they somehow navigated their way through with the season very much alive and Mourinho insists the players’ mentality bodes well for a good campaign.

He added: “I’ve never had anything like this before. Never. After Sunday, for me and the players not going to th e national team, we will have an amazing week to relax, to get energy again.

“But for the boys going to the national teams - and we’ve so many going with different countries - it’s going to be again, and again, and again, more hard work.

“Of course it’s too much.”