Jose Mourinho launches astonishing attack on his Man Utd players as he warns he will not walk away from job
Jose Mourinho has advised his Manchester United players to "grow up" as he took fire at his failure to meet expectations squad and guaranteed they confront a genuine test to prevent Manchester City from ruling if their opponents continue spending.
Perusing from a page of arranging notes in an uncommon tirade that drew correlations with Rafael Benitez's notorious "certainties" question and answer session as Liverpool chief in 2009, Mourinho propelled an ardent barrier of his reign in the wake of Tuesday's embarrassing Champions League exit to Sevilla and demanded he would not leave.
Over the course of one remarkable 12½-minute answer, Mourinho catalogued United’s failures – or what he termed “football heritage” – in Europe since their last appearance in the Champions League final in 2011 and also listed their struggles domestically, compared to the City, since the club’s last Premier League title success in 2013 before declaring:
-Midfielder Nemanja Matic and striker Romelu Lukaku were the only players who had delivered consistently all season and that “many Sevilla players” would walk into his United side.
-The challenge of trying to topple City was similar to the task he faced overhauling Barcelona with Real Madrid, but warned at the Bernabeu he possessed “a nucleus of players of a really high level”.
-His squad must “grow up” and match the “high expectations” of fans.
-United could remain “side by side” with the City if their rivals stop spending, but otherwise, City will be “difficult” to catch.
-Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, was “on exactly the same page” and recognized the huge job at hand and need to spend.
“In seven years with four different managers, once not qualifying for Europe, twice out in the group phase and the best was the quarterfinals, this is football heritage (of the United),” the United manager said ahead of Saturday night's FA Cup quarter-final against Brighton & Hove Albion, which has assumed even greater importance in the week of the Sevilla debacle.
"What's more, on the off chance that you need to go to the Premier League, the last triumph was 12/13 and in the four back to back seasons (since) United completed seventh, fourth, fifth and 6th. So over the most recent four years, the best was fourth. This is football legacy.
"I told [before Sevilla] we are not one of the best groups, not one of the top choices to win [the Champions League].
"I can't let you know with various words while I am still in the rivalry. I can't be in the rivalry, go there and say, 'We have zero chance'. I couldn't reveal to you that.
"We went out to a side that is more effective than Manchester United in [the] most recent seven years in Europe. Do you figure they didn't have any players who could play in my group? In Sevilla, there are numerous players who might play in my group.
"So the fans, they read what individuals compose, they tune in to what individuals say. The general population with a considerable measure of thoughts I used to call them ideologists or dolts – they can be both.
“You cannot expect me to say, ‘This and that player, they have to do better’. I prefer to say that Matic and Lukaku have been performing at a high level since day one until the last match. I cannot tell you the ones that are not performing.
“The fans have to be said about being out and the players have to learn how to cope with that level of expectation and that level of pressure.
“They have to survive and when they survive, they become stronger. An easy life, and the fans not upset, and no critics, that’s not good.
“If you want to make a real top team with the top mentality, you need to grow up and the best way is to have this kind of feeling.
“I don’t want the fans to have low expectations, I want the fans to have high expectations because I want the players to have expectations, too.”
Inquired as to whether the test to pull back City, whom they trail by 16 focuses in the Premier League, was greater than the one he looked with Real – whom he prompted beat Barcelona to the Spanish title in his second season – Mourinho stated: "Likely comparable, however, clearly Real Madrid had the core of players of an extremely abnormal state, and on the grounds that it is difficult for me to talk about my players [at United], it's anything but difficult to talk about the players who are not mine any longer.
"For instance, where are the players that don't play in Real Madrid now and left the club to play, or in light of the fact that the club would not like to keep them? [Raul] Albiol, [Jose] Callejon, they are top players for Napoli.
"The United players that left the club last season? See where they play, how they play, on the off chance that they play.
"On the off chance that the clubs who are in a superior circumstance than we quit contributing and we contribute, we are one next to the other. On the off chance that they continue contributing the same or more than us, it's troublesome. It's as basic as that. It's troublesome."
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