UK Edition
Jose Mourinho refuses to get carried away by title talk after Manchester United put four past Swansea
Jose Mourinho says that he wants to see his Manchester United team challenged before he makes judgements about their title prospects, after they hit four goals in their second Premier League game of the season, beating Swansea City 4-0.
United scored three goals in the space of four minutes at the end of the game to make it eight without reply for the season so far following their 4-0 win over West Ham on the opening day. There were goals from Romelu Lukaku, Paul Pogba and substitute Anthony Martial after Eric Bailly scored in the first half, this being the first time since 1907 a United team have scored four goals in their first two league games.
Mourinho said: “The word that better describes the team now is confident. The team starts the game confident, the team starts the second half confident. The thing that I want to see - but I don't really want to see, only if it happened - is the team losing and the way we emotionally react to it. It's another change, losing and trying to change the result. In this moment everything is going in our favour. But it's not always motorway, you always find difficult roads and roadworks, and we have to be ready.”
He added: “I prefer to say we started last season with two matches, six points and we finished sixth. It's not a lesson, it's a reality of football - two matches are not the end of the world for people that lose and it's not paradise for people that win. I am happy, of course, and the quality of the performance gives me even more confidence.”
Pogba was booked early on for a foul on Tom Carroll and tested referee Jon Moss’s patience later in the first half with another late tackle on Martin Olsson. “The yellow card is a little bit out of context because I thought that [referee] Jonathan had a certain kind of criteria that didn't bring easy yellow cards because there were actions, especially one on [Nemanja] Matic, that is a yellow card, and he decided to speak with the players and go in that direction.
“I thought with Paul he would do the same, so when the yellow card came I was a bit surprised. But then Paul, what he wants is to enjoy, to play football, is to do good things. Sometimes he tries more difficult things than he should because he enjoys to show his quality. He enjoys to play. So no, I didn't fear a second yellow card.”
Paul Clement said that Swansea “needed to do some good business” before the end of the month, having finally sold Gylfi Sigurdsson to Everton this week. “We still have a good squad but absolutely we need more quality players to come in so we have a chance to be competitive,” he said. “The situation is very fluid. There are texts, emails and telephone calls going backwards and forwards. The sooner we do it, the better.”