Mourinho lifts lid on Pogba chat as peace breaks out at Man Utd

Jose Mourinho has told Paul Pogba he must find more consistency after lifting the lid on a conversation between the pair after Manchester United’s 3-2 win at Manchester City last weekend.

The France star has seen his star drop since the turn of the year with a number of poor performances leading to his demotion from United’s starting line-up and amid claims of a major falling out with Mourinho.

Those reported rows had seen the player reportedly offered around by his agent Mino Raiola ahead of a possible summer swoop, but it now seems peace has broken out at Old Trafford after some more positive chats between player and manager.

The turning point appears to be Pogba’s Man-of-the-Match two-goal display in last weekend’s 3-2 win at City that prevented their rivals claiming the Premier League title with a win against their neighbours.

And Mourinho has lifted the lid on a chat between the duo, in which he has told the France midfielder that while he does not expect a two-goal display every matchday, he does expect more of that kind of performance.

“I’ll tell you what I told him after the match,” Mourinho told multiple national newspapers. “I don’t expect you to be man of the match every week, I don’t expect you to score two goals every week. But I expect you to be consistent.

“So, if you ask me if I’m expecting Paul now to be man of the match every week? No. If I expect him to score goals every match? No.

“But I expect Paul – and I think that’s the challenge he has to put to himself – to keep a certain stability and not to have the good match and the so-so match and the bad match.

“I think he has to try to keep that level of stability, and from that stability of course will appear the special match with the special performance like it happened against City.”

Pogba wasn’t the only one Mourinho wants to be more stable, as he also told his critics to support him and his team after good performances just as readily as they bash United after poor ones.

“If you ask me about respect, I say it is about honesty,” he said. “When we play bad then, yes, tell the truth. But when we do something positive, then also tell the truth.

“We are a team that has beaten every other team in the Premier League — beaten every one of the top six. We are a team that in the last three matches [against] Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City, has won all of them.

“We are a team that has already more points than last season, a team that’s had brilliant matches and a team that showed character many times. Last week we were 2-0 down against City and we changed the game to win 3-2.

“After we lost to Sevilla in the Champions League, only a good group with good people could do what we did by winning every single match.

“The easy thing would have been to out against Sevilla and then collapse in the Premier League, in the sense that motivation goes down and the quality goes down. I think that we have given proof of what this group is — it is a group of good guys.”

 

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