Jose Mourinho has defended his decision to criticise his Manchester United players in public and told them it will make them stronger.
United are looking to avoid a third straight Premier League defeat on Saturday when champions Leicester visit Old Trafford.
And Mourinho, who singled out defender Luke Shaw after United's 3-1 defeat at Watford , told his players accepting criticism is a necessary part of their development.
“It's a learning process,” said Mourinho. “When you make a mistake, especially the kind of individual mistake, you have to learn from that mistake.
“You have to learn what that means for the team, a team that works during the week with a game plan, sometimes not during the whole week for the same match, because now we're having a match every three days.
“But you try to have a game plan, you try to identify some defensive and attacking agreements between all of us, and then in the game the individual mistake you can be punished by that, and it happened to us.
“We were punished by other people's mistakes, but these ones we can't control. We can obviously try to control our own mistakes, and that's what we try to do all the time.
"So, the critique is part of the evolution, part of the process and the critique helps people learn how to cope with critics, because it's their life, and from you they can't expect anything but for you to be ready to smash them when they have little periods of not much success.”
Mourinho also rounded on the "football Einsteins” - a term he coined in midweek for the ex-players and pundits who have lined up to criticise his team after their recent poor run.
"I'm not upset with anything,” said Mourinho. “I'm such a lucky guy that I cannot be upset with anything. I'm upset with nothing.
"I think it's a feeling of frustration, but with me it's fine and with the Einsteins it's fine.
"The Einsteins need money to live, they can't coach, they can't sit on the bench, they can't win matches.
"They can speak, they can write, they can criticise the work of other people, but I am a good man.
“I'm a good man of good will. I do lots of charity, I help so many people, so why not also feed the Einsteins? That's fine."
Mourinho also addressed United skipper Wayne Rooney's poor form, claiming it mirrored that of the team on their recent losing streak.
“Wayne Rooney’s form is like Manchester United's form,” said Mourinho. “We're a team. We're not Wayne Rooney, we're a team. We all started well.
“We all won four matches. We all lost three matches in a week. That’s not Wayne Rooney. To be honest, he didn’t play against Feyenoord, so he was only directly involved in two of these three matches.
“But the way we think in the group, everyone is involved in every match, even the ones not playing. We like to say 'very good start to the season, probably better than we could expect, better than you were prepared for'.
“But it was a very good start, and we were guilty to raise the expectations of the people. Then we lost three matches in a week, three matches where we were not consistent, we didn’t play well for 90 minutes and we were punished by the fact we played well for moments, periods and not for the whole game. In football, you have to be consistent during the 90 minutes. And that’s life.”
