Jose Mourinho has revealed what he said at half-time to effect such a massive change in the game against Bournemouth on Saturday afternoon.
United ended up 2-1 winners in the Saturday lunchtime game but they can consider themselves lucky after a terrible first-half.
Mourinho certainly did. Talking after the game (BT Sport, Saturday) he said, “I thought I was the luckiest manager in the Premier League to go in 1-1 at half-time, we were so poor.
“Defensively we were just awful, but I look to all my players here not just the defenders. The first-half was a disaster. The second-half was the complete opposite. We deserved to score before the minute ninety-something.”
Asked what he said at half-time to effect such a positive change Mourinho said, “I was strong but calm, and I started being positive by saying it was impossible to play worse than we did in the first-half, and that the second-half would be much better.”
OPINION
The interviewer was obviously expecting Mourinho to reveal that he laid into his players at half-time. And, if they’d ended up losing the game, perhaps we’d have seen a completely different Mourinho to the one who conducted the full-time interview. He was calm and unruffled, and was a million miles away from the manager who often loves to berate his players in public. Even when he was talking about the defensive issues he was quick to point out he was talking about the team and not any players specifically. His half-time approach worked wonders though. He said that he was positive although he wasn’t smiling when he added that he told his players they could only get better because they were so bad in the first-half. Calm and strong – these two words haven’t been used about Mourinho much recently but if it had this effect on his players we might see more of it in the future.