Jose Mourinho has been warned he must show more empathy to players with “personal problems” after he publically criticised Manchester United pair Luke Shaw and Chris Smalling.

The United boss hammered the England duo over their perceived unwillingness to play through the pain for Sunday’s 3-1 victory away at Swansea.

Mourinho was left having to field a makeshift defence of Ashley Young, Phil Jones, Marcos Rojo and Matteo Darmian.

The former Chelsea boss was seething at Shaw and Smalling for apparently betraying United’s “culture” and suggested he only wanted players in his squad who were willing to put their “bodies on the line”.

Shaw is still dealing with issues attributed to the double leg fracture that kept him out for 10 months last season while Smalling has missed United’s last four games with a foot injury after taking a pain-killing injection in order to play against Chelsea last month.

England manager Gareth Southgate defended the pair this week, saying he had never known either to be “flaky” and now head of the Professional Footballers’ Association Gordon Taylor has voiced his displeasure at Mourinho’s comments.

“I was disappointed by that [Mourinho’s comments] because, knowing the individuals, they are both highly thought of,” said Taylor at a VSI Sporting Directors governance dinner on Tuesday.

Manchester United injury news Show all 5 1 /5 Manchester United injury news Manchester United injury news Ander Herrera (hamstring) Return date not yet known. Getty Images Manchester United injury news Phil Jones (ankle) Return date not yet known. Manchester United injury news Michael Carrick (ankle) Could play this weekend. Manchester United injury news Antonio Valencia (ankle/ foot) Out for a lengthy period, possibly February. Getty Manchester United injury news Luke Shaw (broken leg) Expected to be out until at least April.

“They’ve got personal problems which I don’t need to relay, but sometimes a manager needs to be a psychologist as well, and also to be a counsellor because you can’t treat everybody in the team [the same], every manager must know that. Every player in a team is different.

“When you see what happened with Welsh football and Gary Speed, that brings it home to you that somebody can look on top of the world, with no problems, but [in reality] it’s quite different and that’s why we have a 24-hour counselling service.

“We get some 200 calls a year to those lines because a player could be out of the team, he could be injured. It’s a short-term career and we’re all human beings.