Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Jose Mourinho insists Manchester United's impressive start is 'nothing'

The Portuguese manager watched his side beat Southampton 1-0 on Saturday for a fifth win in six Premier League games

Miguel Delaney
St Mary's
Saturday 23 September 2017 18:40 BST
Comments
Jose Mourinho said he would have preferred to win 5-0 than 1-0 on Saturday
Jose Mourinho said he would have preferred to win 5-0 than 1-0 on Saturday

Jose Mourinho had described Manchester United’s impressive start to the season as “nothing” other than “just a start”, but admitted that the ruthlessness marks a change from last season.

The Portuguese’s side have won five and drawn one of their opening six games after a Romelu Lukaku-secured 1-0 victory over Southampton, despite a flatter display than others they’ve offered so far. While Mourinho put the latter down to fatigue in what was a warm 19-degree afternoon at St Mary’s, he did say it was too soon to start talking about the title.

“It's too early. I know that last season on this fixture I think we would have, maybe, five or six points less than we have this season. So we are better this season than last. But this is nothing. It's just a start. A difficult period with an accumulation of matches that comes in October. Difficult. I really think that six teams are going to fight for the title.”

The match did see Southampton put it right up to United, with Oriol Romeu a regular threat, only to fail to score for the 10th home game out of 13.

“I think they were really tired at the end. Nine of them didn't play in midweek, so nine of them it's not even an accumulation of fatigue. I think the weather was beautiful. Even if you train at 11am, 12pm, 3pm in Manchester, we don't get this weather. Seriously. The last time we had this was in Los Angeles [for preseason] and then in Macedonia [for the Uefa Super Cup], and I think they felt [it]. I saw some players not sharp. Great spirit and always trying, but not the same sharpness. So if your opponent is coming with everything against you, let's do it for 10 or 15 minutes and stay solid.”

Asked whether wins like this are as valuable in terms of spirit as the three 4-0 thrashings United have enjoyed this season, Mourinho denied that.

“No, it's better to win 5-0 than 1-0. We wanted to win also 5-0. It's obvious. But it's not always possible, and today it wasn't. We had opportunities in the first half to score the second goal and then the game is different. Lukaku and [Ander] Herrera, too, and if we'd done that I would have brought on [Anthony] Martial and [Jesse] Lingard and go for a different result. But credit to Southampton and to [Mauricio] Pellegrino.”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in