Jose Mourinho labels his own players as ‘childish’

  • Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho has branded his own players as ‘childish’
  • The Red Devils were leading Leicester 2-1 before Harry Magiure equalised late on
  • The Portuguese manager also said his side missed some ‘joke chances’
  • Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard missed clear-cut chances to kill off the game

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho launched an extraordinary attack on his players accusing them of being ‘childish’, of missing ‘joke chances’ and of failing to follow his instructions as they conceded an injury time equaliser to 10-man Leicester City to fall thirteen points behind leaders Manchester City.

Jesse Lingard and Anthony Martial missed easy chances in a game United should have won comfortably and Mourinho said he had told Ashley Young to reorganise the defence in the light of a late injury to Chris Smalling. 

Their failure to do so led directly to Harry Maguire’s last-gasp equaliser as United fell even further behind neighbours City.

Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho has branded his own players as ‘childish’

Mourinho delivered a excoriating critique of his players capabilities and said: ‘We didn’t win because missed incredible chances. I would say joke chances. 

‘We made a big defensive accumulation of mistakes in an easy match to win. I talked to the players at half time when it was 1-1 that it was an easy match to win.

‘Some players they have childish decisions and time helps them to have maturity and to decide better but some other players stay with childish decisions until the end of their career.

‘It depends on what is inside and the way they learn or they don’t learn. For example Scott McTominay didn’t play today and has still a lot to learn and he is a kid who last year was still playing with kids. 

‘But no childish decisions at all. Some other guys have childish decisions for many, many years.

‘We were punished by our mistakes. It was an easy match to win, we did everything to win but when you lose big chances. Childish loss of possession, so easy. Childish in their box and childish in our box.

‘It is as bad as a defeat. Sometimes you take a point and you say “okay” and you accept it as it was hard to get a positive result. That is not the case. That is not the case. It is a game to win easily and then it is not easy to say we lost two points.

Mourinho seemed particularly upset with the fact that his instructions hadn’t been followed. With Chris Smalling struggling with injury in the last moments, he was unable to track Maguire, who scored with a run past the centre half.

And Mourinho said: ‘I had the chance to speak with Ashley Young and to tell him the way the team had to be in position because of Smalling’s difficulty but there was a lack of maturity.

Asked about Martial and Lingard’s misses, he said: ‘Two chances? It was much more than that. It’s not more than two, it is much more than that. 

‘It is a big frustration as they are easy goals to score and easy goals to kill the game but not just the goals we missed, also some easy way out to counter attack where we lost the ball quite easily.’



Read more at DailyMail.co.uk