Jose Mourinho claimed Manchester United will be in “trouble” come the start of the new Premier League season.
The United boss was speaking after he saw his side lose 4-1 to Liverpool in Michigan. It may have only been a pre-season friendly but the Portuguese looked miserable after the final whistle and revealed he expects only one more signing before the deadline, and Nemanja Matic will miss the start of the season with injury.
For him that means only one thing, a sorry start to the new campaign which gets underway on Aug. 10.
“I would like to have two more players,” the United manager said.
“I think I am not going to get two. I think that it’s possible I will have one. I gave a list to my club of five names a few months ago and I wait to see if it’s possible to have one of these players. If it’s possible, it’s possible. If it’s not, it’s not. If it’s possible, it’s good. If not then we keep fighting and working and believing in the players that we have.”
He added: “This is nothing to do with reinforcements. The reinforcements are (Paul) Pogba, (Marouane) Fellaini, (Victor) Lindelof, (Marcus) Rashford, (Jesse) Lingard, (Nemanja) Matic, (Antonio) Valencia. These are reinforcements. This is not our team ... We started the game with almost half of the players who are not even going to belong to our squad on August 9. They will not be here.”
Even by his increasingly morose standards this was a particularly bleak assessment by the United manager who is trying to steer the club to their first league title since 2013.