No miracle for Man Utd players´ souls – Mourinho

Jose Mourinho accepts there are “no miracles with the players’ souls” when it comes to rebuilding confidence at Manchester United.

The former Chelsea boss made a fine start as manager at Old Trafford, winning the Community Shield against Leicester City and the opening three Premier League matches of the season.

However, United lost the derby 2-1 to Manchester City on Sunday and were lacklustre in Thursday’s 1-0 Europa League defeat at Feyenoord, albeit Mourinho made eight changes to the starting line-up in Rotterdam.

United largely underachieved in Louis van Gaal’s two campaigns at the helm and Mourinho was asked about the difficulty he has in restoring confidence at Old Trafford given their difficulties in recent seasons at a post-match news conference.

But the Portuguese gave a bullish answer, saying: “When you lose matches there are no miracles in terms of the players’ souls. 

“If you win matches, people are happy, you lose matches and people are sad and feel it. That’s the normal nature of football players.

“But of course I’m here not to let them be in a negative mood, or a negative period because we lost two matches.

“I think we had two matches where we didn’t play well for 90 minutes, but two matches where we deserved a better result than what we did.”

Mourinho is also refusing to pay too much credence to the back-to-back defeats and insists he was not “on the moon” after United’s positive start.

“When we won the Community Shield and three Premier League matches I was not on the moon saying we are a phenomenal team that will destroy every opponent,” he added. 

“I said, ‘Yes good start, very good start’ but I never was on the moon. I know the situation is not click your fingers and everybody is perfect. 

“To be honest we didn’t play phenomenal matches in two defeats but I think losing both is a punishment for the team because we deserved more.”