Jose hails team spirit

Jose Mourinho felt Dele’s desire to make himself available for our FA Cup fourth round replay against Southampton epitomised the spirit in the squad at the moment.

Dele damaged his ankle in the early stages of Sunday’s 2-0 win against City in the Premier League, but still managed to put in a 60-minute shift before being replaced.

Interviewed before Wednesday night’s replay, Jose explained to BT Sport: “Dele is injured, but he's on the bench because he's a brave guy who wants to try to help the team and make himself available.”

Dele’s moment arrived on 61 minutes, when he replaced Tanguy Ndombele. Just over 10 minutes later, we were facing the exit door of the competition as Danny Ings put an impressive Southampton side 2-1 up.

Dele then started pulling the strings. On 78 minutes, he exchanged passes with Lucas and the Brazilian finished brilliantly for 2-2. The best was yet to come though as on 85 minutes, Dele started a move from deep (that included nutmegging referee David Coote), combined with Gedson and then produced a world-class pass for Heung-Min Son, who was upended in the area by Angus Gunn. Sonny slotted home the penalty to set up a fifth round tie at home to Norwich City.

Jose said: “The squad is about everybody giving everything they can. Dele made himself available, Giovani Lo Celso, he wanted to play but we knew he couldn’t. Even knowing that he couldn’t, he wanted to. We had to stop him.

“That’s the spirit we have in this squad. The boys are fantastic and I’m so happy for them. I’m also happy for myself, I love to win, but the feeling of them going into this little holiday period with this feeling of victory in such difficult conditions, yes, I’m so, so happy for them.”