Mourinho: We need to do a better job of taking our chances

The game at the Benito Villamarin gets underway at 18:45 local time.

Do you think it’s possible that the unusual nature of this season – with the break in between and everything else – has brought with it an elevated risk of injuries? And, as for tomorrow’s game, are Andrea Belotti and Stephan El Shaarawy in line to start?

“This is a good question. It’s a question where we can all have our own thoughts on it. We’ve been talking about it for a long time now; it feels like it’s already been four or five months that we’ve been talking about this World Cup. But the truth is that right now we have to cope with the circumstances it has created. I’ve learned to cry less about things and instead try and deal with the reality of them.

“You could say that there are too many games, you could say that today’s players have completely different careers and challenges to those of years ago, you could say that the rich clubs are privileged because they have squads that allow them to use their players in a different way to the less rich clubs, which have more problems.

“But the truth is that there are rich clubs, poor clubs and then the less rich clubs. The poor clubs play one game a week and can prepare for that game for the whole week. The rich clubs, with the squads they have, could play every day and still make 10 changes. The less rich, who have more moderate ambitions but still have to play the same number of games as the rich, are those who end up in difficulty. And that’s what I’m having to go through right now.

“As for Belotti and El Shaarawy, neither of them. It’s all open.”

It feels like Tammy Abraham has been struggling a bit in the last few games – do you think his issues are physical or mental?

“The problem is with us, it’s a team issue. I don’t like to dig into this sort of analysis. I get that you guys want to. It’s easy enough to find top players in other squads who are going through similar spells, both in Italy and oversees. For you guys it’s all numbers and statistics. For us, the truth is that we need goals in order to win games.

“If you won games based on the number of chances you created, then we would be top of Serie A right now – because we create loads and we miss loads. That happens sometimes. And sooner or later another side will pay the price for that, because we will score goals from four chances.

“The key thing is that we focus on things as a team and we don’t put pressure on individuals like you want to. You guys have a different job. For us it’s not about Player A, Player B or Player C and how many goals they have or haven’t score: we face things as a team and, considering the chances we are making, we are not scoring enough. That’s the direction we need to move in – as a group we need to score more and be more efficient in front of goal. It will happen.”

What were you referring to when you said after the Lecce match that the players didn’t seem to be following your instructions? Have you seen improvements over the last few days?

“Well, it’s not easy as a coach to speak about matches 10 minutes after they have finished. Sometimes you say things that you end up having to explain. The gameplan you have always wins the match in your mind. But it’s one thing to have a plan and another for the players to be able to put it into practice. From the bench I had the feeling that what I had outlined in the video sessions had changed a bit.

“I will still say that we need to have more discipline in how we play: when even two or three players lose that discipline, both in attack and defence, then it has an impact on the rest of the side. So that is something we need to improve on, because all the best performances we’ve had over the last 18 months since I got here have been about great focus, respect for the gameplan and strong organisation of the team. There are very few matches where we’ve won because of individual brilliance or because players have done something differently to what we prepared in advance.”