Jose Mourinho blames Luke Shaw for Manchester United’s 3-1 loss at Watford and raps England left-back’s mental attitude
Old Trafford chief subs £30million star and claims late mistake ruined all the visitors had planned and trained for
JOSE MOURINHO slammed his full-back Luke Shaw after Manchester United collapsed to a third straight defeat.
The Special One was fuming with England left-back Shaw when he failed to get close enough to Nordin Amrabat as Juan Zuniga went on to put the Hornets 2-1 up on 83 minutes.
Mourinho, who had words with Shaw after subbing him a minute later, said: “At 1-1 everyone thinks we are going to win the game because we were showing complete control, intensity and creativity.
"The game was there to win and never to lose.
“But their second goal is a mistake that goes against our plan and against our training, because our intention was for their wing-backs to be pressed and not let them progress.
“And what happened was the guy gets the ball 20 to 25 metres away from our box and instead of being pressed, we give him the space to progress.
“And when he was inside the box we were not confident enough to tackle.
“For the second goal, Amrabat receives the ball and our left-back is 25 metres from him instead of five.
"But even at 25 you have to jump and go and press. But no, we wait.
“This is a tactical but also a mental attitude. It’s something that doesn’t become perfect in a couple of weeks. So we have to improve, no doubt.”
The United boss now finds himself in the middle of a major crisis in his second month at Old Trafford, following losses to Manchester City, Feyenoord and now Watford, who celebrated a first win over United for 30 years.
And it was the first time since he was boss of Porto in 2002 that Mourinho had suffered a hat-trick of defeats.
He was also upset with ref Michael Oliver as he felt Anthony Martial was fouled by Miguel Britos ahead of Etienne Capoue’s opener for the home side.
Mourinho added: “Once more a crucial decision.
“It was a little bit like the game at Old Trafford against Manchester City.
“History will say the result, not the double wrong decision by the referee and linesman a few metres away.
“The game was going well, the pressure was there. One isolated counter-attack they scored.
“But on top of that we had our individual mistakes. When in the stadium everyone was thinking about Man United scoring a goal to win the game, we made a mistake.”