Ahead of the Manchester Derby, United Manager Jose Mourinho is playing some mind games on his opponents. First he accused Manchester City of diving. Now he warned the derby official about City’s “tactical fouls.”
Mourinho has of course praised his rivals and opposition ahead of the huge match today, but at the same time he’s been…well, he’s just being himself.
In saying that City are prone to diving, Mourinho claimed “a little bit of wind and they fall.”
He added: “One thing that I don’t like a lot is that they lose their balance very easily.”
United head into this one eight points behind the table toppers, and while a win would start to see some tightening in the league title race, a loss would give the visitors an extremely comfortable margin over the second place side. Chelsea fell to lowly West Ham United yesterday, their second defeat this season to a team currently in positioned in one of the three relegation slots.
This setback prompted Chelsea boss Antonio Conte to declare his team out of title contention; meaning there is now only the two Manchester clubs left standing. Ahead of the two sides squaring off, in a match that very likely will be played in heavy snow, Mourinho took yet another shot at the opposition.
He claims that City is prone to committing tactical fouls.
“They attack with a lot of players and when they lose the ball, they are many times unbalanced in numbers,” he said.
“They have lots of people surrounding the ball area and they have a very strong – and this is a great quality – transition in the next few seconds after they lose the ball and many times, they need what is called a tactical foul.”
“Then it is up to the referee to analyze and to make a decision, but I cannot speak about that.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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