''POGBA DOESN'T CARE''; MOURINHO DECLARES!

Jose Mourinho has made an impassioned and sometimes bizarre defence of Paul Pogba, insisting the Manchester United star deserves respect.

Mourinho insists Pogba doesn't care about being criticised as he struggles to live up to the £89.3million price-tag that made him the world's most-expensive footballer last summer.

Pogba, who turned 24 on Wednesday, has come under renewed fire for his display in United's FA Cup defeat at Chelsea on Monday when he was eclipsed by N'Golo Kante.

However, in the midfielder's defence, Mourinho claims the pundits criticising his France international are jealous because he earns "10 times" what they did as players.

"I feel that the world is losing its values and we all know that envy is coming in at certain levels," the United boss said. "That I am scared about, especially for the next generation if things go in this direction.

"It's not Paul's fault that he gets 10 times the money some players did in the past.
"Its not his fault that some pundits are in real trouble with their lives and need every coin to survive and Paul is a multi-millionaire. It's not his fault.

"I think he deserves respect, I think his family deserve respect.

"He's from a working family, a family with three boys — and I'm sure they need a lot of food on their table each day because they are all giants, so I'm sure that the mum and dad had to work hard for many, many years for them.

"He's a kid who came to Manchester as a teenager, who fought for his career here and was not afraid to move and go to another country [joining Italy in Juventus in 2012] and look for better conditions for him. He's a kid who reached the top of the world with this work, nobody gave him anything.

"So I'm really, really worried with the previous generations that things are going in such a direction that envy is everywhere.

"I am very happy with Paul and the club is very happy with Paul. And because of his personality, he doesn't give an 's' to what people say."

Mourinho also described United's nightmare coach trip home from Stamford Bridge as "a gift", when the team arrived home at 4am Tuesday after abandoning their badly-delayed charter flight from Heathrow.

Mourinho is proud of his players' reaction to that inconvenience and is adamant their "promenade on the M6" would not affect them on Thursday night against Rostov in their Europa League last-16 return, which is balanced at 1-1 after the first leg in Russia.

"The first gift was to play Monday night and then the second gift was to play with 10 men [after Ander Herrera's 35th-minute red card] and then third gift was to have a promenade on the M6," he said.

"But we are professionals, so the next morning we were here. We were here to train and today the same and tomorrow we go with everything we have.

"I think the fans will give us this little bit of extra energy, so we believe that tomorrow we can cope with the situation and we can fight to be in the quarter-final."

Mourinho says United are still without injured Anthony Martial and Wayne Rooney and not even their fellow forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic's return lightened his mood much.

"That's a big boost, but we never cry about who's in and who isn't," he said. "We played the last match without all of them and we didn't mention that.

Now we have him, the next match we don't [because of his domestic suspension].
"We always think positive, so no problem."