Even though Manchester United are currently 13 points off Premier League leaders Chelsea, their manager Jose Mourinho has insisted that his goal is to still win the title with the club at the end of the season.
After purchasing Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Eric Bailly, and Paul Pogba in the summer, Jose Mourinho insisted before the start of the season that he believed Manchester United would be challenging for the title come the end of the campaign.
After winning their first three games against Bournemouth, Southampton, and Hull City, Manchester United did look as though they would be in the reckoning. However, since then, Manchester United have only won four of their last 13 games, while Chelsea are currently on a 10 match winning run. Subsequently, Manchester United have dropped out of the title reckoning, and are currently all the way down in sixth place.
But ahead of Manchester United’s game against Crystal Palace Jose Mourinho told BT Sport , via Metro , that even though the distance was mammoth between his team and Chelsea, the aim was still to become champions.
Mourinho insisted.
“The aim is to be champions, that’s the destination. This season the distance is a considerable distance. Even if you have a good run of results, you are always depending upon what the others are doing. We are going to try, we are still in the fight.”
Following the match, which Manchester United won by two goals to one thanks to a late strike from Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Jose Mourinho’s view point remained in tact. In fact, according to ESPN , Jose Mourinho remarked that if Manchester United hadn’t drawn against Burnley, Stoke City, West Ham United, Arsenal, and Everton, five games that he insists the club should have won, they’d be “close to the top of the league.”
Of course, at the moment, they’re not. But Jose Mourinho was still full of praise for his players, insisting in the post-match press conference that they fully deserved their hard-earned victory at Selhurst Park, while he praised their work ethic and the performance they produced. Mourinho said this.
“I think the players they deserve that. That is what you have to do. Even if this game finished 1-1, I would have the same feeling, it is difficult. The players they reached some limits, they were tired, there were some injuries, Zlatan told me he was tired but they gave everything they could. The boys they did phenomenal against a difficult team.”
“The boys deserved the late happiness. Two victories means six draws. The reality is that I focus on performances, they have been very good for a long time. The players deserve this happiness, home and away. We are looking at teams that desperately need points to get out of relegation.”
It looked as though Manchester United were going to sacrifice another victory for a draw against Crystal Palace when James McArthur struck in the 66th minute to equalize Paul Pogba’s opener in first-half stoppage time. If they’d done so that would have been Manchester United’s seventh draw in their last 10 games.
But instead Manchester United rallied in the final 25 minutes, and were unlucky not to get a penalty when Joe Ledley clearly handled the ball in the area as Marcos Rojo tried to head it towards goal, while moments later Juan Mata scored what appeared to be a legitimate effort, only for it to be ruled out for offside. Palace will also feel hard done by, as Ibrahimovic’s assist for Pogba’s goal looked to have come off his arm, while the French midfielder was just offside, too, plus Marcos Rojo should have seen red for a two-footed tackle, too.
Up stepped Zlatan Ibrahimovic to convert the winner, though, delightfully finishing a swift Paul Pogba pass with just a few minutes left, which gave United all three points and allowed Mourinho’s title dreams to continue for one more game at least.
[Featured Image by Christopher Lee /Getty Images]
