Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has thanked referee Michael Oliver for saving the club’s season from “total disaster” by giving a red card to midfielder Ander Herrera in the FA Cup quarter-final defeat to Chelsea in March.
United are scheduled to play their 62nd match of the 2016-’17 campaign on Wednesday, against Southampton, and then two more – the last match of the Premier League, against Crystal Palace on Sunday, and the Europa League final against Ajax next week. Mourinho said a “crazy” season would have become impossible had they beaten Chelsea and progressed to the semi-finals of the FA Cup, reported ESPN FC.
Mourinho has earlier lamented over United’s fixture list and injury woes, saying it was impossible to play 17 matches across April and May with just 16 available players, which led to him prioritising the Europa League as a way to get into the Champions League next season.
“You know that, in all of my career, I was never out of European competitions in the group phases, and in the last 16 I was out only once,” he said. “So I reached the semi-finals 10 times and I go always until the end of competitions.
“In the League Cup I normally go far. In the domestic competitions cups I normally have a lot of matches. But like this, I never have. This situation of you play a final and the game that you should play that day is going to be postponed until the last week, for the last week.
“This is crazy. And I repeat the same – thank you Michael Oliver because we were out in the FA Cup. If we had gone to the FA Cup semi-finals it would be a total disaster. I don’t know when we would be playing that game.”
Mourinho said the number of games his club has played and the number of his players injured this season has been unprecedented in his managerial career. “I never, ever have had a situation like this and, on top of that the accumulation of big injuries, not small, not the injuries that you say, ‘OK, hamstring, two weeks,’” he said. “No. It’s surgery – one knee, another knee. Another foot. Just big surgeries.
“So fewer players and fewer players and fewer players. It’s very difficult, really very difficult. But we are there and we go to the final.”
