Mourinho explains Depay ommission

Jose Mourinho has claimed the reason Memphis Depay has not been given any minutes on the pitch of late is because he expects him to leave in January.

The Dutch international has been a huge disappointment since moving to Old Trafford from PSV Eindhoven for approximately £28m in the summer of 2015.

The attacker failed to impress consistently under previous manager Louis Van Gaal, resulting in him being left out of the squad for the FA Cup final victory in May.

Under Mourinho, Depay found game-time quite limited and he has not appeared in a matchday squad for over a month, the reason why Mourinho has now revealed.

“I have to say that in the past couple of months my decisions in relation to Memphis were influenced by the feelings and information that he would like to leave in January and that we were going to have a real offer that we would be willing to accept,” he said.

“That obviously influences me. If I know, if I have the feeling that a player is leaving – if I have to give chances and develop other players – then I go to [Jesse] Lingard, [Henrikh] Mkhitaryan, [Anthony] Martial, the players I know 100 per cent who are going to stay with us. It is a position where we have more options.

“I know the public image is always influenced by some details of their private lives but the reality is that he [Depay] is a very good professional, a very good boy.

“He has a high level of education, super polite, super professional, and works really hard. But it’s a position where I have Martial, Mkhitaryan, [Juan] Mata, Lingard plus [Wayne] Rooney and [Marcus] Rashford who can also play in this position. So we have six, seven players.

“When I have the feeling and information that the player probably has a big chance to leave then I have to care more about the others.

“But if you arrive in January and nothing happens – and we have lots of matches – then if he is going to be my player until the end of the season I will help him and he will be useful for us.”

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