It is a probably a sign of the times that José Mourinho, in keeping with the promise he made at the start of the season, had no interest in antagonising Pep Guardiola on the eve of their latest managerial tête-à-tête. These days, the old adversaries have called a temporary truce. Mourinho even managed to praise Guardiola during his latest press conference – not something many of us anticipated when they both pitched up in the same city last summer – though it is tempting to wonder whether some of the Manchester United players would rather he revert to old habits rather than turning his fire on them instead.

Chris Smalling and Phil Jones are but two of them in these strange times when Mourinho’s more cutting lines appear to be reserved for his own players. The United manager might have laid off Guardiola but his own press conferences are never short of content and the latest had another bristling undercurrent now it has become clear his attempt to make public humiliation a recognised form of medicine has failed to coax Smalling and Jones back in time to face Manchester City.

This abrasive style of management has become a regular theme at Old Trafford this season, as Luke Shaw, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Anthony Martial and a few others can testify, but it was still unusual to hear a manager question the commitment of two players who had the backing of the club’s medical staff and see how aggrieved Mourinho was that Jones, for example, had decided it was out of the question to try to run off a broken toe.

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Smalling’s healing process has not been accelerated by Mourinho’s public challenges either and it did not need long in the manager’s company to understand what he made of it. Indeed, there was enough disdain in his voice to merit a follow-up question about whether it might actually persuade him to move out the players in question. Could he, after all, trust two centre‑backs when he had openly questioned their bravery?

He rejected that one but, clearly aggrieved, he also said it was a wider issue for United than merely Smalling and Jones. “It’s not just about them,” he explained. “It’s about the philosophy and mentality around them.”

Asked to elaborate, he chose three words – “cautious, cautious, cautious” – and when he was asked to clarify who, besides the relevant players, he was meaning (the suspicion being it was their agents and possibly some of the medical staff) he hinted again at a culture he did not like. “Cautious … just a cautious approach. It’s a profile, it’s the philosophy of work; just that.”

Mourinho had already stated that Smalling and Jones needed to show more courage, arguing that Marcos Rojo’s ruptured knee ligaments meant it was time “to be brave – to [take a] risk – because for the team you have to do everything”, as well as provocatively insisting that were it himself carrying the same injuries, he would have played through the pain.

It was some statement when Smalling, to put it into context, was wearing a knee brace a week ago but Mourinho’s response was withering again when he was asked whether he suspected the modern-day player was not willing to put his body on the line. “Professional football at a high level – yes.”

The use of the word “philosophy” made some in his company suspect he might mean it was the culture left by his predecessor, Louis van Gaal, who not only used that word in almost every interview but did not like to take risks when it came to injured players.

In contrast, Paul Pogba will also miss Thursday’s fourth-against-fifth encounter after aggravating a hamstring problem in the win against Burnley on Sunday, an injury that Mourinho attributed to an “accumulation of fatigue” caused by the team’s workload.

“Paul was injured because he played two hours against Anderlecht [the Europa League quarter-final last Thursday] and then he was playing 90 minutes against Burnley two days later,” Mourinho, warming to one of his favourite themes, explained. “If you compare us with Chelsea and Liverpool we have played 18 more matches than them.

“That is half a Premier League so [consider] what that means in terms of recovering and injuries and travelling and psychological pressure and the number of training sessions … It’s not out of the context that the last two champions – I include Chelsea now and Leicester last season – didn’t play in Europe and that three years ago Liverpool were almost champions without playing European competition.”

His own team are 15 points back but have an opportunity to climb into the top four for the first time since 16 September, when they were only four games into the season, and if Mourinho was in a more mischievous mood he might have cranked up the pressure on Guardiola bearing in mind the level of expectation at City when the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach arrived.

Instead, he was much more gentlemanly than at most other points of their rivalry, declining to comment on City’s results and even describing a manager he once considered a sworn enemy as “very intelligent”.

The subtext seemed to be that United need to address their own problems before commenting about what is happening elsewhere. “Maybe our opponents look at us with different eyes because we don’t have Zlatan and Paul and Marcos and [Juan] Mata and Jones and Smalling. Maybe they look at us with different eyes but they are not stupid, they are not naive and they know we are going to give them a fight.”