3 things Jose Mourinho recently did that has deteriorated his relationship with his players

#1 Undermining his backline in various ways

West Ham United v Manchester United - Premier League — Luke Shaw has been able to turn it around but most players struggle in toxic circumstances

Everyone knows how frustrated Jose Mourinho was when he couldn't convince Ed Woodward to sign a centre-back in the summer transfer window. It went public as most things have with Manchester United over the last couple of years.

However, Mourinho, in an in-your-face sort of manner, has responded by starting a central midfielder in the backline on 3 occasions already this season. Elsewhere, it would be unheard of but at Manchester United, it is just one of the things that the club just does every once in a while.

To add to this, Mourinho keeps putting the kibosh on his players' confidence by airing his grievances in public. After their dull performance against Valencia in the UEFA Champions League, Mourinho took a potshot at his defenders once again.

“The players tried. They raised the level of their efforts. They raised the level of their intensity in spite of the fact we don't have many with that intensity. We don't have the technical quality to build from the back."

"We tried to do something we did well which was to stop a fast team on the counter attack. We knew we wouldn't create 20 chances.”

Mourinho is starting to sound like Graeme Souness and any team could do with a Souness being at the helm.

About the author

Shambhu is a European and international football journalist at Sportskeeda who focuses on previews, listicles and news articles. An ardent Manchester United supporter since before his teenage years, he started following the Red Devils by age 10 watching MUTV on television. Shambhu is also a highly-revered rapper and a playback singer on Spotify, having a whopping 1 million monthly listeners.

For his articles, Shambhu believes in triple-checking every piece of information, relying on trusted websites like Transfermarkt and Opta, and staying away from speculative publications. He believes that his law degree helped him to be more articulate and meticulous with his content and one of his core strengths is seamlessly involving emotion in his write-ups owing to the love for the sport. For Sportskeeda, has done exclusive interviews with Spanish legends Gaizka Mendieta and Fernando Morientes so far, and his articles boast of a huge readership of close to 50 million.

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Edited by Arvind Sriram