Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho, has claimed that referee Michael Oliver, saved his team from having a “total disaster” of a season.
Mourinho admits his squad would not have been able to cope if they had a longer run in the FA Cup.
United were dumped out of the competition, after a 1-0 loss at Chelsea, a game that saw Ander Herrera sent off.
Mourinho said: “I repeat the same – thank you Michael Oliver. Because we were out in the FA Cup. Because if we go to the FA Cup semi-finals it would be a total disaster.
“I don’t know when we would be playing that game. I never, ever have had a situation like this and on top of that the accumulation of big injuries, not small, not the injuries that you say ‘ok, hamstring, two weeks’.
“No. It’s surgery, boom, boom. It’s surgery – one knee, another knee. Another foot. Just big surgeries. So fewer players and fewer players and fewer players. It’s very difficult, really very difficult. But we are there and we go to the final.
“The accumulation of the games, I never had that. You know that in all of my career I was never out of European competitions in the group phases. And in the last 16 I was out only once. So I reached the semi-finals 10 times.
“I go always until the end of the competitions. In the League Cup I normally go far. In the domestic competitions cups, I won in Spain, in Italy, in Portugal so I normally have a lot of matches. But like this I never have, I never have.
“This situation of you play a final and the game that you should play that day is going to be postponed until the last week, for the last week! This is crazy.”