It's very interesting, Smalling gets singled out, but Blind's name doesn't really get brought up. Seems a bit weird to me.
Now ever since Frank de Boer criticised him very early on at Ajax for depending on his talent and not going the extra mile, he put in extra work and became a very fit and dedicated professional. At the World Cup 2014, Van Gaal stated that Blind was probably the fittest player in the whole squad. At United he's been very fit too, making 56 appearances last year when our whole squad was plagued by injuries.
As some people know, his dad is under huge pressure as a National Team coach. He got the job in a sleezy way after Hiddink and based on results I think he's the worst performing coach since some guy back in the 1950's. Daley Blind is now, believe it or not, one of the most important players at the Holland national team. We have Robben constantly injured, Memphis struggling and Wijnaldum and Janssen having just arrived at their clubs, so Daley's basically the only one he's been featuring regularly at a genuine big club for the last years. There are two massive matches coming up, first a friendly with Belgium and then a qualifying match, and if we feck that up it's pretty much game over for coach Danny Blind.
So we have a player who's normally very fit, and now suddenly last Sunday he's fit enough to be on the bench but not fit enough to start? Of course he could have had a legitimate problem. But if it had been a Cup Final I think he would've wanted to play, and if it was the same game but not followed by some vital National Team matches where his dad's job is on the the line, I think he would've been ready enough to play too, it's all a bit too convenient for me. After all he was not completely injured and fit enough to be on the bench. This didn't happen though, we now had to take a massive gamble Phil Jones, who was just back in training for a week and hadn't played a match this season.
So then we get back to Mourinho's original comments, which weren't just about criticising some players. He was also very much trying to make a compliment to the players that were ready to scrape out the victory. I think his comments were based on what he sees. On the one hand we have Antonio Valencia, playing half a match with a broken arm. On the other hand we have Shaw, with his brother whining on twitter, complaining about some pain. Sunday we needed Smalling (who actually played with injury against Chelsea, so the media singling him out is ridiculous), or Daley Blind to help us at centre-half to get three points, but because they weren't ready we had to take a ridiculous gamble with Phil Jones. We someone like Mata who's fighting for his place, despite his history with Mourinho, while on the other hand we have Henrikh sulking. We have 35 year old Ibrahimovic giving everything he has, playing match after match, while someone like Schweinsteiger seemed only half interested in being here. I think this is where Mourinho was getting at with his comments.