Mourinho hits back at Neville over McTominay comments

Matt Stead

Jose Mourinho has hit back at “negative” Gary Neville over his critique of Scott McTominay.

Mourinho took aim at Manchester United legend Neville after the Sky Sports pundit questioned the long-term future of McTominay at Old Trafford.

Neville questioned whether the midfielder was “good enough” on the ball to play for the club, suggesting he could be more suited to a role as centre-half.

But Mourinho, who named McTominay his unofficial Player of the Year at United’s end-of-season awards, has defended the 21-year-old.

Asked whether United have improved overall this season, Mourinho told MUTV: “It depends the way you want to analyse it.

“If you want to be positive and respect the effort of everyone and the clear numbers and pragmatic numbers of the improvement, you say all positive things – the best position for five years, a huge amount of points that would normally give a fight for the title until the last few weeks, lots of clean sheets, Golden Glove, more goals than last season and the second-best team in the country.

“Also, in the second major competition in the country, we are one of the two best teams; we are playing the [FA Cup] final so if you want to read it in a positive way, you can in a very objective way.

“But if you want to be negative, you can always be negative. You can be negative until the point that you say that Scott McTominay, who is a kid who arrived here at nine years old, is not good enough.

“So if you want to be negative, you can be negative without dimensions.”