“We have a lot of big players and a lot of players in my situation as well who are not getting the minutes they probably thought they deserved to get”.
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The United and England captain has hit back at critics, but Mourinho believes he saw a change in Rooney after his nation’s win over Slovakia.
Rooney was restored to his favoured No 10 position by Mourinho for this season, after finishing last season as a central midfielder for United and England’s national team. We like to say really good start to the season, probably better than we could have expected.
“It’s a learning process”, he insisted. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t trust him or you have a problem (with him).
“You can be punished by that”. But football is a different story. “I am such a lucky guy”.
“Let me check. If it is nothing serious then he will come and play, if not he will stay at home”.
A three-time Premier League victor at Chelsea, he added: “I always said since day one that my title ambitions were also a motivational factor”. But the Einsteins need money to live. They can’t coach, they can’t sit on the bench, they can’t win matches.
“They can criticize the work of other people”. They can speak, they can write.
He also defended the fact that he publicly criticised Luke Shaw, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Jesse Lingard and Eric Bailly – saying he was doing it to help them cope with criticism by the media.
When asked about the difficulty of facing reigning champions Leicester on Saturday, Mourinhho jokingly referred to himself as “the worst manager in the history of football” in relation to his back-to-back title triumphs with Chelsea in 2005 and 2006.
He is my captain, he is the club captain, the players’ captain and that is hard because sometimes you are the club captain because you have lots of years in the club, sometimes you are the manager’s captain because the manager likes you very much, sometimes you are the players’ but not the manager’s one. “Not for Leicester but for everybody”.
United had started the season strong with nine points from three games but consecutive losses to Manchester City and Watford in the Premier League and Feyenoord in the Europa League – all within the span of eight days – has invited the ire of many fans.
“One of the teams was, of course, Man United, another one was some team managed (by) the worst manager in the history of football, but it’s really hard”.
“But it’s really hard”.
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“I just feel that it’s part of the job and you have to look at in this way”.
