Mourinho admits misfiring Manchester United 'need some time'

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has stressed his side "need some time" to get up to speed in the new Premier League season.

United were beaten 3-2 by Brighton in their second game of the campaign and they face Tottenham on Monday already six points behind the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea, albeit with a game in hand.

Rumours of discontent behind the scenes at Old Trafford have been swirling and Mourinho's terse press conference last week did little to dispel the notion all is not well.

In terms of United's on-field fortunes, Mourinho has welcomed the Spurs fixture coming eight days after the Brighton contest as he feels his players entered the new campaign without sufficient preparation.

"When you have a good week, when you train really well, things are positive, you expect good individual performances," he told Sky Sports.

"You don't expect mistakes and you expect a good result, not a defeat.

"Normally when you lose you want to play immediately and two days after that was not the case. But I am happy that was not the case because in this moment we need some time.

"We need players to be back, we need players to train more, to have a kind of pre-season after the pre-season that they didn't have after the World Cup."

Mourinho is hoping to see his side raise their game against Spurs, with United holding fond memories of recent meetings with the north London outfit.

The Red Devils edged out Mauricio Pochettino’s team in last season’s FA Cup semi-finals, with three points now being sought on a Premier League stage.

"It is a big game against a good opponent, an opponent that last season, in all the three matches we played, they were difficult matches in spite of [the fact] we won two of them,” said Mourinho.

"It [the FA Cup semi-final] was a good performance, away from home where everybody was expecting us to lose the match. We didn't start well and conceded an early goal and after that we had the quality and the mentality to change the result, to be dominant in the second half and it was a really good performance.

"We know what a good team they are and we know that they come here with their objectives. Big match but no need to work much on the motivational level because we have natural motivation to play against the good teams."

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