Sam Allardyce believes that Manchester United outplayed Tottenham in Monday's 3-0 defeat at Old Trafford and feels that Jose Mourinho has come in for unfair criticism in the wake of the result.
Indeed, Mourinho stormed out of his post-match press conference after a heated discussion with the media, the Portuguese boss demanding respect after citing his three Premier League titles as a mark of his pedigree as a manager.
Still, many regarded the heavy defeat as the beginning of a full-blown crisis in Manchester, with alleged friction between boss and players – most notably Paul Pogba – also the topic of much debate.
Regardless, English top-flight veteran Allardyce feels that his compatriot has been unfairly chastised by the media and pointed to a surplus of facts to support his backing of the Red Devils boss.
“Man Utd were so good – I'll tell you why,” the former England boss told Talksport.
“The stats were: 57 per cent possession, 23 shots at goal, five on target [for Man Utd]. Tottenham had 43 per cent possession, nine shots on goal and five on target.
“It's only Tottenham's finishing that got them the victory. Normally that result would never, never happen.
“So is it a freak result or not? I mean when you've had 23 shots at your own place and you've not scored that's not the manager's fault.
“The manager always gets blamed at the end of the day, but he's set his team out to go and attack – that's what he said at his press conference – they've gone and attacked and created enough chances and enough opportunities to win the game comfortably.
“They've failed to take those chances and they ended up getting sucker-punched by what, in the end, was pretty poor defending.
“It's alright saying it's a disaster, it is, because it's three-nil, but if you're a manager you'd say to your players at the end of the day 'look, we cut the silly mistakes out, keep getting this possession rate and this shot rate and we will win far more games than we'll lose.'
“They [the media] are steering all the way around it because it was three-nil, but no one's looking at the real facts.
“The facts were: they did create more than Tottenham, they did outplay Tottenham, but unfortunately missed their chances and their slack defending and some brilliant finishing by Tottenham was the difference.”
