George spoke to us after Watford 3-1 Manchester United and thinks the way we are using Wayne Rooney is a detriment to Paul Pogba’s game, is he right?
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“Players like Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic came partly because this is a massive club but also because Mourinho is here”.
Despite a poor result, Mourinho feels it is unfair to judge United’s performance against a settled Feyenoord team that sits top of the Eredivisie with five wins from five.
“I don’t want to personalise it. Okay, I changed eight players, but I played with a good team and enough good players to win the match”.
United travel to Vicarage Road on Sunday in need of a result to belay fears that their fledgling season is unravelling. We were not trying to win, we were just in control of the game and waiting for the possibility to win or not to win. “The players are professional, they have to be fit and they are, and they have to be mentally strong to play again”.
United, who suffered their first league defeat of the season against Manchester City last Saturday, are fourth in the table.
Summer signing Henrikh Mkhitaryan seems to have aggravated his thigh injury in the 2-1 derby loss to Manchester City last weekend, and he will miss the games at Watford and Northampton Town ( League Cup ).
Mourinho still trusts Pogba and says it is unfair to keep talking about his fee as, relative to United’s wealth, there were bigger transfers this summer. It’s something I don’t like.
Days after losing to his old foe Pep Guardiola, it would be interesting to see how Mourinho deals with another one on Sunday.
“Some players are playing their first minutes of the season, there have not been many minutes for them. In the second half they answered to my words at half-time”.
But Mourinho insists he will not react any more acutely to the recent losses than he did when United made a 100 per cent start to the new campaign before the worldwide break.
“When we won the Community Shield and the three Premier League matches, I was not on the moon”, the Portuguese said when asked whether the defeats had underlined the scale of the challenge ahead of him.
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He said: “Yes, I always expect maximum ambition and maximum focus it doesn’t matter the competition or the opponent”. I know the situation is not click your fingers and everybody is ideal.
