Manchester United news: Jose Mourinho expresses grave concerns at missing out on Champions League after Arsenal draw
Mourinho believes his side have dropped six points by not winning games they dominated, while Phil Jones admits Arsenal's late equaliser felt 'like being slapped 6-0'
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Your support makes all the difference.Jose Mourinho’s mentor, Sir Bobby Robson, had a favourite saying whenever he was asked what might have been. “If is the biggest word in football, son.”
When he returned to his suite at Manchester’s Lowry Hotel, after what felt like his first defeat to Arsene Wenger, Mourinho would have been rolling football’s biggest word around his mind. His last three matches at Old Trafford, against Stoke, Burnley and now Arsenal were games Manchester United had controlled. The first two they had utterly dominated. Their return had been three points.
Saturday’s performance against Arsenal should have delivered something Mourinho had been searching for since his arrival at Old Trafford – a win against one of the big beasts of the Premier League. Instead, his return was a 1-1 draw.
“We should have had six more points, which we totally deserved,” he said. “If we had six more points, just see where we would be.” The answer to Mourinho’s question was that Manchester United would be sandwiched between Arsenal and Tottenham in fifth. The climb would be one place but in terms of proximity to the oxygen of Champions League football, it would be a giant leap.
Of the three teams that had taken points from Old Trafford, Arsenal had the best record in this corner of Manchester and they had not won here for a decade. Stoke’s last win had come in 1976 and Burnley’s in 1962. Mourinho described their three draws as “three miracles”, which given that Arsenal had rather more possession on Saturday, could be counted as an exaggeration.
However, frustration is eating away at the manager and his team. Phil Jones, returning to United’s defence at home for the first time since January, commented: “It feels like we have been slapped 6-0.” The reality was that Olivier Giroud’s 89th-minute equaliser was Arsenal’s sole attempt on target.
On Sunday, they face West Ham, who have not won here since May 2007 when Carlos Tevez’s goal kept them in the Premier League, although Neil Warnock, whose Sheffield United side was relegated as a result, will forever mention that Sir Alex Ferguson fielded a weakened side. “At least I want someone to come here and play better than us,” said Mourinho. “Then you can go home and say: ‘these guys were better’. I am going home and the feeling is that we lost.”
A club with the highest wage bill in world football can only argue ill-luck for so long and the fact is that a third successive Manchester United manager is on course to fail to qualify for the Champions League, something that proved fatal to the careers of both David Moyes and Louis van Gaal.
Mourinho might just survive the £40m hit that accompanies the Alaska that is life outside the Champions League and the absence of the suspended Zlatan Ibrahimovic added to the decline of Wayne Rooney meant he fielded the young, fast combination of Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial. That, in the long term, might be a combination that works very well for United, which for Rooney would have been another blow in a bruising week.
His absence had nothing to do with the England captain’s drunken piano playing at a wedding party that had seized the headlines but in Mourinho’s belief that his team needs pace.
“Arsenal are a team that let the opponents play,” he said. “I thought we would have space and the ball would arrive quite easily to the attacking players. I believed that ones like Mata, Martial and Rashford were faster than Wayne and were better at attacking opponents one to one in the last line of defence. I thought it was the best option.”
There was a time when Rooney, who as an Everton teenager announced himself with a staggeringly brilliant goal against a far better Arsenal side than this, was sometimes Manchester United’s only option. In a Manchester United side that is still searching for rhythm and fluency he has not started a league game since September. That is worthy of far more comment than any star turn at wedding party.
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