Mourinho rues Reds' injuries

The Reds lost Romelu Lukaku to a nasty-looking head injury early in the goalless draw with Southampton at Old Trafford on Saturday and Mourinho later revealed fellow striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic would be out for a month with a knee problem.

Those two are set to join an already lengthy list of absentees. Eric Bailly has been out since early November with an ankle injury that required surgery and Marouane Fellaini (knee) hasn't featured since the home win over Brighton & Hove Albion later that month.

Meanwhile, Antonio Valencia has missed the last four games with a hamstring strain and Michael Carrick's sole appearance this season came in the Carabao Cup tie against Burton Albion in September.

Chris Smalling, Matteo Darmian and Anthony Martial have also missed fixtures during the busy Christmas run and Mourinho told reporters in his press conference after the Southampton game that, given the injury problems, he will find it difficult to give his men some much-needed rest.

"The boys are trying, but we have lots of problems in the team and we lost Lukaku and Ibrahimovic for a month," said the boss. "That means Ibra stops his run to recovery, his running for many, many months in a period when he needs to play and to have minutes, but now we lose him for a month and then we lose Lukaku, but I don't know for how long.

"Marouane Fellaini, I don't remember the last time he played. It was a long time ago that I don’t even remember. [I think] it was a match at home against Brighton? I don't remember, but it is a long, long time ago.

"Michael Carrick, it was in pre-season [when he last played in the league] and I don’t remember him playing during the season [in any other games] so we have problems. We have difficulty to rotate players."

Mourinho admitted it could be a blessing in disguise that the Reds are not partaking in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, which will give his players a period of respite.

"I think not playing in the cup semi-final is a good thing for us because we have no players to play these two extra matches in January," he said. "And now we have to cope with Everton and Derby County and, after that, we have an open space of nine or 10 days before Stoke City. Hopefully in this period we can rest, we can work and we can recover some players to attack the second part of the season."

The Reds may have drawn the last three Premier League encounters over the festive period but, despite admitting results need to improve, the United boss believes his side created enough chances to win all three games.

"Three draws are different to three defeats," he continued. "I know the difference between three draws and three defeats is just three points, but the difference in terms of the mental state of a defeat and a draw makes a difference, so we need to improve the results, not the level of performance.

"In these last two games at home, if I forget the big mistake of the first Burnley goal, the team was solid, the team played well, took lots of risks, created, tried and never went to direct football, because in this moment we don’t have the players that allow us to do that, so I am happy with this quality, and spirit.

"We finish the year in third position in the table and we have to fight to improve our position."