What Mourinho Said To United Players After The Embarrassing First-Half Against Bournemouth
Reuters/John Sibley
Jose Mourinho has shed light on his half-time team talk during Manchester United’s encounter with Bournemouth on Saturday.
The Red Devils started their Premier League game against the Cherries very poorly. They failed to close down their opponents as well as create any major chances in the initial stages, and ended up conceding the opener shortly after the opening 10 minutes.
In-form forward Anthony Martial did manage to pull one back for the visitors before the break, but it wasn’t until the second half that Mourinho’s men actually began playing decent football.
After the game, the Portuguese tactician publicly admitted that he felt very lucky for not having been 5 to 6 goals down against Bournemouth in the first 45 minutes itself.
RELATED:
https:/2018/11/04/what-mourinho-said-to-eddie-howe-after-manchester-united-beat-bournemouth/
Jose told BT Sport: “At half-time I thought I was the luckiest manager in the Premier League, because to be 1-1 in a half where it should be like 5, or 6 too.
“We were really lucky, because we were really poor. Defensively awful, absolutely awful, and when I say defensively I don’t just look to my defenders, I look to my team as a team we didn’t start pressing up.
RELATED:
https:/2018/11/03/bournemouth-1-2-manchester-united-5-things-we-learned/
“The work that we did during the week I felt like people watching this game they don’t believe how hard we train this week our pressure on this opponent. First-half it was a disaster.
“Then in the second half it was exactly the opposite, we create a lot of chances, we press higher, we had much more aggression, intention, we created lots of chances, we deserve to score before the minute 90-something, and in the end we we had this goal which gave us important points.”
When asked if he delivered a strong half-time team talk, Mourinho revealed: “Strong but calm. I started by being positive, by saying it’s impossible to play worse than we did, so the second-half is going to be better for sure. The team performed much better.”