José Mourinho has hit out at “football Einsteins” for trying to undermine his and Manchester United’s achievements in the wake of the team’s recent run of three successive losses.
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The United captain has started all their Premier League games this season and was in the line-up for Wednesday’s 3-1 EFL Cup victory at Northampton, with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marcus Rashford coming off the bench.
“We deserved to win clearly”, said Mourinho “[It was as] hard as I was expecting, but we were totally in control for the first 35 minutes and then we were again in control for the last 45.
Mourinho swerved most reporters after the match, only speaking to rights-holders before United’s team coach made a swift exit. “We were totally in control for the first 35 minutes and then we were back in control for the last 25 minutes”.
Mourinho added: “As a team we had control from the beginning. The game could and should have been easier because we should have been playing against 10 men very early in the second half”, Mourinho was quoted as saying by the Manchester Evening News.
“But they fought and they played with their strength”.
The striker was frustrated not to have caused an upset, especially having felt all the visitors’ goals were avoidable, but knows they must now focus on Saturday’s League One clash with Southend – a match the 33-year-old believes could be even harder than facing United.
Neville’s defence of the England global also drew plenty of disgruntled United fans in his direction, and it’s fair to say that the comments weren’t particularly kind on him.
“I think I should stop to speak about referees’ decisions”.
Midfielder Michael Carrick, who made his second appearance for United in the ongoing season after his outing in the Community Shield game against Leicester City in August, made an immediate impact as he opened the scoring for the club at Northampton. What Carrick brings to your team, he can see a pass, and I think that is what has been lacking a little bit the last few games.
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“Later I changed (Morgan) Schneiderlin to Marouane (Fellaini) to try to control what I knew was going to happen with our opponent losing 2-1, which was (they would) start putting long balls into the box and waiting for set-pieces, but I think collectively the team was fine”.
