By Daily Sports on March 18, 2018

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho said his players were “scared to play” and questioned their “personality” in the FA Cup win over Brighton.

Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic scored to put United into a record-equalling 29th FA Cup semi-final.

Mourinho said his side deserved the win and was happy with the result, which was “better than the performance”.

He said: “We didn’t play as I wanted them to play; we didn’t play as I prepared the team to play.”

Mourinho added: “We deserved to win, clearly – we had the match under control – but we didn’t play well. Sometimes there is a contradiction between what you work on in the past two days and what you did on the pitch.

“That is more frustrating than the result. Once more I wasn’t happy with the connection in the build-up. I blame everybody.”

‘When the sun is shining, everything goes well’

Mourinho was criticised for an unadventurous approach after United were eliminated from the Champions League by Sevilla on Tuesday.

He then attracted more controversy by suggesting immediately afterwards that being knocked out in the last 16 was “nothing new for the club”.

Mourinho responded to that criticism with an extraordinary 12-minute defence of his methods and record at a news conference on Friday, during which he reeled off a list of statistics and added that he was not afraid of his responsibilities.

Then, when addressing the written press during the second half of the conference, he referred to “idiots”, “idealists” and “the dictionary of life” in an impassioned speech.

The performance against Brighton was hardly any better than the one against Sevilla – although the result was an improvement.

United only had two shots on target – scoring with both – while Brighton had 14 efforts on goal, and Mourinho made clear his displeasure afterwards.

He said: “A few other guys, I saw them scared to play. I cannot say much more. It is a relation with personality, is a relation to trust, is a relation to class.

“When the sun is shining and everything goes well, you win matches, you score goals, everything goes in your direction, every player is a good player and wants to play and wants the ball and looks amazing and is confident.

“When it is dark and cold, and in football that means a period of bad results or a bad result, not everybody has the confidence and personality to play really.

“To be on the pitch and touch the ball every five minutes, everyone can do it, but to be on the pitch and say ‘give me the ball because I want to play’, not everyone can do that.” (BBC)

•Photo shows Manchester United Manager Jose Mourinho

Source Daily Sports

Posted March 18, 2018

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