Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho admits tonight’s League Cup Quarterfinal match, which resulted in a 2-1 loss to Championship side Bristol City, was just a day at the office for some of his players. For some of his players, it was a day at the office in which they were essentially just sitting in the cubicle staring at the clock, waiting for it to spin until closing time.
Tonight was a historical upset, and a massive event for Bristol. For United, it was a disaster, especially so for Paul Pogba, arguably the team’s best most valuable player. Pogba put in a dreadful performance, which included an incident that some labeled as diving.
When you consistently have teams that aren’t all that interested, a la United this evening, you have to wonder why it’s worth continuing to even bother the League/Carabao/EFL/Capital One Cup anymore.
“In the first half we lacked the intensity that they had,” Mourinho said in an interview with Sky Sports.
“When I say intensity, I don’t just mean physical, I also mean mentally. For some of us it was just one more day in the office. Probably a day that some of them don’t even want to come to the office.
“For the Bristol boys, it was a big, big day and in the first half we could see that.”
“The reality is that the ones (players) that were on the pitch were the ones that were not in the last match and are the ones that not going to be in the next match.”
I think they lost a good opportunity also to play semifinals and also to have two more matches to play,” Mourinho told the club’s official website, ManUtd.com
“But I don’t want to blame the players at all because I think they were professional — it wasn’t a case of ‘we don’t care about the game’ or ‘we don’t have responsibility’ or ‘we don’t have pride’.
“I think they showed they had that after the 1-0 and they had that until they scored the second goal in the last few seconds and we had no chance to react.”
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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