José Mourinho refuses to believe his relationship with Manchester United’s players is partly to blame for the team’s struggles this season and insisted the only way that could be a factor is if they were “dishonest” footballers.

United are languishing in seventh place, with a negative goal difference, after successive draws against Crystal Palace and Southampton, meaning the 20-times league champions are 19 points behind Manchester City at the top of the table and eight adrift of the Champions League places.

Three days after allegedly calling Paul Pogba a “virus” in a dressing-room outburst at Southampton, Mourinho would not be drawn on their troubled relationship but, in a more controlled exchange at his latest press conference, he insisted he did not follow the theory that various players were doing badly because they disliked the manager.

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“I don’t understand that story,” Mourinho said. “If you think a player only plays, in your words, when he is behind the manager, what I have to call these players – or in this case, what you are calling them – is dishonest.

“A football player is paid – and very well paid – to be a professional. What is that? It is to train every day to his limits, to play every game to his limits, to behave socially according to the nature of his job, to respect the millions of fans around the world and to respect the hierarchies of the club.

“If a player doesn’t do that, it is one thing is to perform well and not so well, another thing is to be a professional. If you say a player plays well or badly because of how good a manager is, you are calling the player dishonest.”

As ever with Mourinho, the key was to work out the exact point he was trying to make and, in this case, it felt conspicuously like another attempt to absolve himself of blame for their predicament, while possibly getting a message to Pogba, the subject of many questions. Mourinho may also be scoring a few points at the expense of the television pundits, including many former United players, he has come to resent because of their criticisms.

“Because you are a journalist and not a professional player, I understand your question,” Mourinho said. “But when pundits, who were professional players, say ‘this player is not playing for the manager’, did they do that when they were players? Were they dishonest players? If they were, they shouldn’t be in front of a camera speaking to millions of people.

“I disagree totally with that. You have to analyse a player by: ‘is he performing, yes or no?’. You shouldn’t go in that direction [the relationship with the manager] because you are calling the players dishonest.”

When it was pointed out an employee’s work could be adversely affected in various walks of life if that person did not get on with the people at the top, Mourinho told the journalist asking the question: “So you have only one solution. If you don’t like your boss, you have to leave the newspaper. It is still a dishonest factor. Be honest and leave.”

Of the latest alleged row with Pogba, he said: “I am not going to analyse the [Southampton] performance individually. I told after the game the reason why, in the second half especially, we did not have wave after wave of attacks.

“I told the reason why we were not consistent and that we didn’t keep the opponent under pressure because we lost too many balls.

“I told that they were not the best decisions in terms of ‘how many touches I need to pass the ball’ and the speed of the decision. I told that without saying one single name and I am going to say the same thing without names.”

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Mourinho has significant selection problems for Arsenal’s visit to Old Trafford on Wednesday with at least 10 players injured, suspended or needing late fitness checks.

He retracted his comments from earlier in the week when he told Brazilian television United would need a “miracle” to finish in the top four. However, he would not go any further than saying he was confident United would still finish above Everton, who are sixth. “The investment Everton made was phenomenal and obviously there is a great improvement in that team from last season but in spite of this I don’t think Everton will be in front of Manchester United at the end of the season.”