Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has once again bemoaned his side's "crazy" fixture schedule, insisting that he has never experienced anything like it.
United will take part in their 62nd match of the season when they travel to face Southampton at St Mary's on Wednesday night, with one more Premier League outing and the Europa League final to come after that.
Mourinho has plenty of experience juggling numerous competitions from previous spells at the likes of Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, but he believes that this is the worst fixture schedule that he has ever had to contend with.
"The accumulation of the games, I never had that. You know that in all of my career I was never [knocked] 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," he told reporters.
"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.
"And 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 'okay, 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."
United will host Crystal Palace in their final league game of the season on Sunday before their seventh match in May alone sees them take on Ajax in the Europa League final.
Barney Corkhill
