Jose Mourinho expressed his frustration following Manchester United’s 1-1 draw with rivals Arsenal at Old Trafford on Saturday.
The manager spoke to MUTV following the final whistle and was full of praise for his players, pointing to a lack of luck as the reason why the Reds came away with just a point.
UNITED’S BAD LUCK
“Everybody knows that [the bad luck]. Not me, because I am Manchester United manager, not you because you are the Manchester United journalist, but I think everyone knows this. The boys, they played so well, so well. From the defensive point of view, they were perfect except the goal. We were perfect the way we controlled them, we were so good. David De Gea, not one save. We were dangerous, we scored, we should have scored more. We were very positive in our approach, very aggressive, pressing high, but we were very, very unlucky.”
VALENCIA’S PENALTY APPEAL
“I don’t want to speak about it. I have a very good feeling with Andre Marriner. He is the kind of referee who, if he makes mistakes against my team, there is no intention. He doesn’t want to be the star of the game, he is a good referee. I don’t want to say if it is a mistake or not; I know because I saw the video, but I don’t want to say because he is a good referee.”
THREE SUCCESSIVE HOME LEAGUE DRAWS
“Imagine if we had the six points we lost at home, where we would be. We had three amazing performances. I am sure we are going to play other matches like that at home and we are going to win. That’s football. What we did against Stoke, Burnley and Arsenal at home, is for the people to leave the stadium with the happiness of the nine points, but instead we go with three points, which is really bad, but the performance levels make me believe a lot in the future. It is not possible that you are unlucky every game, but in this moment we are unlucky every game, which is incredible.”
GREAT DEFENSIVE PERFORMANCE
“The work was good, they are working well. Jones and Rojo did not go to the national team, they stayed and we worked in the past two weeks. They are working so, so well. Antonio had a broken arm, but he played amazingly well. Top players like Sanchez, Ozil, Walcott – we saw nothing from them because of us, not because of them. We had good chances: if Rooney had passed to Pogba he has an open goal. Rojo had a header with an open goal. We had chances to kill the game at 2-0 but out of nothing, 1-1.”
FRUSTRATED DRESSING ROOM
“The players are quiet. They feel like it is a defeat and they are very disappointed. But I told them, the worse feeling is when you are upset with yourself because you didn’t perform or you made big mistakes, but they cannot have that feeling. They have to be proud with what they did, but obviously they are very disappointed because we lost two points against a very good team that did not have a shot [on target].”
UNITED’S AMAZING FANS
“I think we have amazing fans – the way they react after this defeat is amazing, because they know the players did fantastic work and they can control their disappointment with the result to praise the players and their performance.”
Mourinho was also speaking to Sky Sports and in his post-match press conference
Report by manutd.com
