Jose Mourinho reveals captain Antonio Valencia could miss entire festive period

JOSE MOURINHO has revealed that his No1 right-back Antonio Valencia is a serious doubt for Manchester United's crunch festive programme.

The captain was forced off in last weekend's victory over West Brom and has now joined Eric Bailly, Marouane Fellaini and Michael Carrick on the sidelines.

And now his manager has confirmed that the 32-year-old is set to miss the clashes against Leicester, Burnley, Southampton and Everton.

Mourinho said: "Valencia is out as you know. Eric Bailly is having surgery right now, or is just finishing or is still there.
"Fellaini is not available. I don't know (over festive period). Michael Carrick, no. But not for the Christmas period."

The news will come as a major blow to Mourinho, especially after he questioned the attitude of his squad following the shock defeat at Bristol City in the Carabao Cup. However, he denied that those men who let him down could find their Old Trafford futures now in jeopardy.

The Portuguese coach said: "No, I don't make decisions based on only one game or one feeling or one night, not at all. "First of all, you always like to speak about the loser. Probably you should speak more about the winner, what I told after the match.

"They were lucky but they fought a lot to try to be lucky and it’s one of the beautiful things that can happen in football when a team from a lower division kills the giant. "Football has changed so much, lower division is more professional and that could happen even more.

"I could be critical with my players but they did enough to win. They lost when they were the only team people believed could win. So we move on and we move on quickly because we have another match."

United are currently 11 points neighbours Manchester City in the Premier League title race as they approach the halfway point in the season. When asked what the expectations were for the Red Devils, Mourinho added: "I don't know. You say, you are the ones, not me.

"Expectation is to go to every match and try to win, which is what we do. The matches we lost we fought until the last second.

"The matches we lost if I'm not wrong 2-1, 2-1, 1-0, so we really manage to fight in every match to try the best result and nothing more than that we can do, we can promise, we go to every match and do our best."

From The S