Maybe The Journalists Passed Conte The Wrong Message — Mourinho

Jose Mourinho has come out to say his tremendous record of success makes him as easy target for criticism.

Manchester United have been blasted this week for their style of football despite drawing with Liverpool at Anfield and beating Benfica in Lisbon in the Champions League.

He told a news conference on Friday: “I think it’s my fault, because people are used to my teams getting good results and winning titles.

“Other people have more time than I have. Other people have different standards than I have and that’s not a problem for me at all.

“We are going to lose matches, that’s obvious, and I can imagine we are going to have even more criticism than we have now. But honestly, no problem.”

At his own news conference on Friday, Conte called the whole episode “stupid” but insisted he did not regret his comments.

Mourinho declined the chance to reply, although he repeated his claim that some managers look to find excuses in the length of their injury lists.

He said: “I don’t speak to him. I don’t know why he speaks to me. That’s no problem.

“Maybe it’s not his fault. Maybe it’s the journalists’ fault when probably they’ve passed him a wrong message. I know what I said after the match.

“It is the reality. There are managers all over the world that, by philosophy, they prefer to speak about injuries, prefer to try to find excuses of a hypothetical failure based on injuries.

“Since last season we had big injuries and last season, without Lukaku, Zlatan was even more important for us.

“Our philosophy is not to moan, not to cry. I moan and cry about other things. I moan about the fixtures, moan about no time to rest. I moan about why I don’t understand why we play Saturday after Wednesday when we should play Sunday.

“I moan about this all the time but not about injuries. When managers say I moan about the fixtures then he is right but nobody can say I moan about injuries.”