Marouane Fellaini Is A Fighter – Mourinho

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho hailed Marouane Fellaini for showing “the fight” to change club’s supporters’ minds about him.

Mourinho told a news conference: “We are all managers, we are all different. Sometimes we like players others don’t like, some players perform better with some of us than others and I have examples of players that didn’t perform well with me and did with other managers.

“I think Marouane has important qualities and I try to use these qualities depending on the situation. He has played with me as defensive midfielder, as second striker, adapted to the needs of the team. He’s a great character, we have a good relation and things are going really well for us.

“I think only a strong character would resist the difficulties here because he had some difficult times where people didn’t recognise his qualities and probably other managers didn’t like so much the qualities that he has, so you have to be a strong character.

“He’s a fighter, a guy with lots of pride. I’m really pleased I helped him to reach this and to change the perception the fans have now, I’m really happy for him.”

This season, their four home Premier League home games have ended 4-0, 2-0, 4-0 and 4-0, though Mourinho is refusing to get carried away.

He added: “It’s just four matches at home. I know in the same four matches last season we got eight points not 12. The relation with the matches is we have four more points, we are playing well.

“I don’t say well for 90 minutes because we had periods where we lose a bit of our consistency, but that’s difficult to do that for 90 minutes. It’s difficult to do that after a Champions League game.

“So I’m happy we start really strong, respecting the opponent but going strong for not giving them a chance to stay in the game. So I’m really happy with the points.”