Jose Mourinho has rose to the defence of his players by saying that the current poor run of form will only make them stronger.

After managing to win the opening three games in the league, Manchester United went on to suffer three consecutive losses before finally bouncing back with a win over Northampton Town in the EFL Cup. A win against such lower league opposition is not necessarily a testament to the quality of the team, but it at least provides them with some confidence going into the weekend’s game against Leicester City.

Mourinho has had big spells of poor form in the last couple of years and there has been a suggestion that the Portuguese manager is starting to get found out with regard to his dated tactics. However, he managed to win the Premier League title not too long ago with Chelsea and there is every possibility that United may very well come back with vengeance this weekend. For the time being, though, Mourinho has had to defend his players due to the poor form. The Portuguese claimed that the poor form would make his players stronger.

United have been looking devoid of ideas and they have failed to create much clear-cut opportunities in the last three games. This is despite fielding the likes of Paul Pogba, who is the world’s most expensive player. “It’s a learning process, you make a mistake, especially the kind of individual mistake [we have], you have to learn with what that means for the team. It happened to us. We were punished by other people’s mistake, these ones we cannot control. We can obviously try to control our own mistake, that’s what we try all the time. The critique is part of the evolution, the critique is part of the process,” said Mourinho.