Former Chelsea midfielder Deco has told Manchester United players that they must accept that Jose Mourinho “knows better than them” and will criticise them in public.
Several Manchester United players have already been on the receiving end of public dressing downs from Mourinho. Luke Shaw was criticised for his role in a 3-1 defeat to Watford last month whilst Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan seemed to be the subject of veiled critiques after the Manchester derby.
It is not an unusual scenario for Deco, who was part of Mourinho’s Champions League-winning side in 2004, who believes that Manchester United’s players must learn to deal with their manager’s critique.
Speaking at the launch of Soccer Six at his old stomping ground of Stamford Bridge Deco said: “If you are playing at a club like Chelsea, United, Barcelona, Madrid — the big clubs — you need to be prepared to do your best. If you want to play at a high level you need to be able deal with everything.
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Deco later added: “I don't like the coach criticising me, but he knows better than us players and sometimes he does that not to pressure players but to give something different. He knows better than us, he's with them every day and of course the players don't like it but sometimes it works.
“At Porto sometimes publicly he did the same thing. It is part of his work, he knows sometimes the player reactions will be different. When you lose and when you are not playing very well you need to improve.
“Whether the coach says it on the media or in the dressing room it is the same thing, when the team is not playing well everyone knows that they need to do better. Maybe Jose knows that when they have lost a few games they need to improve. I don't think it's a problem.”
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