Following his team’s 3-1 win at home to Manchester United on Sunday, Jose Mourinho said that United’s title hopes are now effectively over. The result meant that Unitedis now 14 points behind Premier League leader Arsenal, which beat Clint Dempsey and Fulham 2-0 at the Emirates on Saturday to stay in first-place.
“Maybe if I say [United areout of title contention], some people from United would ask: ‘Who am I to say that?’” Mourinho said. “But I don’t think [coach] David [Moyes] will be upset if I say the reality: 14points difference and 13 and 12 [to the others]. Can they recover to one of those teams? They can but to three of them? It needs three teams to have almost a collapse. What I hope they do is to beatall of them to finish top four.” During his interview, Mourinho confirmed that Fernando Torres, who came on as a second-half substitute for hat-trick hero SamuelEto’o, sustained a knee ligament injury that will sideline him for “weeks.”
Moyes, who has now failed to beat Mourinho in 10 attempts, reflected on United’sseventh defeat of the season: “What we won’t do is throw the towel in until we can’t get there [to the title],” he said. “The job is to try to finish first. There are no clever answers:it’s the next game. We’d lost one in six before today in the league and I didn’t think there was a big difference between the teams today. The difference was our defending to set pieces.”
Separately, it was confirmed that United captain Nemanja Vidic will be suspended for three games for the straight red card he received for a late challenge on EdenHazard in stoppage time.