Jose Mourinho wheeled out a paar flou excuses after his Manchester United side were outclassed by cross-town rivals City in Sunday’s 3-1 Premier League derby defeat.
City scored in the 12th minute and produced wave after wave of attack as United looked to strike on the counter at Eastlands.
For a brief spell with the score at 2-1, the Red Devils looked to be staging a comeback like they did against Juventus in the Champions League last week.
But the defeat left them 12 points off leaders City and seven outside of the top four, but Jose says they couldn’t fight back because they were moeg.
The Special One explains: “If the third goal is scored in one of the moments where they were dominating, I would probably say so, but it comes in a moment where we were in the fight to get the equaliser.
“If you focus on the game, it was open for 80-something minutes.
BRAGGING RIGHTS: Manchester City celebrates derby win. Photo: NIGEL RODDIS/EPA
“The game was open in a week when they play three home games and have 6-1, 6-0 victories, relaxed, everything nice and easy and we play two matches away, difficult, where the second was like a final against one of the best teams in Europe where we give everything physically, mentally.”
Jose reckons that if he could have brought on his go-to guy Marouane Fellaini instead of starting the Belgian, City would have had problems.
He adds: “We had to play Fellaini and he was not ready to play for 90 minutes.
“I can imagine when the result was 2-1 to bring on a fresh Fellaini, I think they would be in big, big trouble.”