A week after excoriating his players for their unprofessional attitude at Huddersfield Town, José Mourinho was all smiles as his Manchester United side beat Tottenham Hotspur with a late Anthony Martial goal.
Since it was the United manager’s decision to send on Martial as a substitute 10 minutes earlier he was entitled to be happy, particularly as his side had picked up only a point from their previous two matches. “Both sides were trying to win, and that’s what I like to see,” Mourinho said. “Maybe we got a bit lucky in the end, they had a good chance just before we scored, but in the whole match I think we produced more chances to win than they did.
“It was a good performance from us, I liked it, and had the result been 0-0 or 1-1 my feelings would be the same. The players gave absolutely everything this week, every ball was like the most important one of their career. We showed great focus, concentration and desire, and we were playing a quality team. When it went into the last few minutes we knew a single defensive mistake might cost us the game, and in the end that was what happened to Spurs.”
The Portuguese held a finger to his lips at the final whistle and muttered directly into the camera after their most important win of the season so far. “Some people speak too much,” Mourinho said of the gesture. “You know, calm down, relax. Relax a little bit. Don’t speak too much – speak, speak, speak. You know, relax.”
Asked if it was aimed at the critics he labelled “Einsteins” or journalists, he said: “Yeah, relax a little bit. Don’t be so nervous, don’t be so excited. Calm down a little bit. The opposition bench did their job, super-correct. It has yet to arrive, the match where myself, Mauricio [Pochettino], my staff and his staff, have a problem. We played against each other so many times since Spain, and we have a really good relationship. We lose, we win, I don’t know if we draw and we are always correct with each other. And once more I’m even happier because we beat a very good team. I like the team very, very much.”
Mauricio Pochettino and his players did not disagree. After 80 minutes of defensive concentration from both sides the game was won by a route-one goal, with Romelu Lukaku heading on David de Gea’s long ball to allow Martial a run into the Spurs penalty area. “Late in the game you thought it would take a stroke of genius or a mistake to produce a goal, and it was us who made the mistake,” Pochettino said.
Ben Davies described Martial’s winner as “a poor goal to concede” with so little of the game remaining. “We switched off at the wrong time and in the wrong part of the pitch,” the Tottenham left-back said.
Spurs were without their leading scorer, Harry Kane, though Pochettino was unwilling to offer excuses. “We were always going to miss our main striker, he’s one of the best in the world, but I was happy with the performance,” the Tottenham manager said. “I thought we deserved something from the game, but now we move on to the next game against Real Madrid and we will assess Harry’s chances of playing in the morning.”