Mourinho: United A Work In Progress

Manchester United’s midweek win over Northampton Town arrested a run of three defeats, but Jose Mourinho is keen to stress that patience will be key as he continues to implement his own methods and style.

Despite a strong start to the campaign, a bad eight days had prompted fierce vilification, something that the manager felt completely unnecessary at this early stage of the season, labelling some pundits ‘critical Einsteins’. He also added that he had taken a number of positives from United’s recent games despite the negative results.

“Of course [it is still a work in progress]," the boss told MUTV. "This is a process of years, not a process even of months. But you can change things and improve things like I think we have done. We’ve played a few matches already where you could feel the differences in the style, differences in the approach and differences in the intensity.

“Even in the difficult week where we had bad results and defeats, in these matches we saw, not with consistency, a few very interesting things,” he continued. “For example, the way we played in the second half against Manchester City and Watford. In every match, we try to improve but, without the results, it’s difficult to persuade people that we are in a process.”

There’s no let up for Mourinho’s side, with Leicester coming to town for Saturday’s 12:30 BST kick-off at Old Trafford on Saturday. The Foxes will be returning to M16 for the first time since being crowned Premier League champions in May, and the boss is expecting a test worthy of their lofty billing.

“The more I see them and the more I analyse them, the more I understand why they were champions,” Jose commented. “It’s very difficult to score goals against them; it’s difficult to keep clean sheets against them, so we know that it will be a very difficult match for us.”

“That said, we know it will be a difficult for match for Leicester also. Even the teams that beat us recently had a really tough game against us; it was very difficult for Man City to beat Man United; it was very difficult for Feyenoord to beat Man United and it was very difficult for Watford to beat Man United. We know both sides will find it tough.”