Manchester United played a one all draw in the first home match of the new champions league season after they failed to break down Valencia’s defence, but before the start, the game was delayed for five minutes, and Jose Mourinho blames the Manchester Police for the delay. The Portuguese manager claims his side Manchester United were denied a police escort for their Champions League clash with Valencia, leading to the team's late arrival at Old Trafford.
The match kick-off had to be delayed by five minutes owing to traffic issues around the stadium, with the United squad themselves among those caught up in the hold-ups on Tuesday.
A journey to the ground expected to take 30 minutes took more than an hour, ahead of a goalless draw that did little to lift United out of their current poor form.
And Mourinho leveled the blame squarely at the feet of local police for causing unnecessary problems for United in the build-up to the match.
"We left the hotel at 6pm hoping that 30 minutes would be enough. It usually is. But this time the police refused to do an escort, so we came by ourselves. From the Lowry Hotel we took 75 minutes. UEFA and the referee were nice to allow the match to start five minutes late. It was not a problem with the club organisation. We were informed that the police refused an escort."
Manchester Police this morning denied this claim with Chief Inspector Andy Sutcliffe maintaining that no such agreement was in place with the Old Trafford outfit undermining the earlier claims of the Portuguese coach.
A statement from GMP said: “All police deployments are carried out following a comprehensive risk assessment process and, specifically in respect of escort team buses, are only ever undertaken on occasions when there is intelligence or information to suggest a risk of threat or harm to the players.
“GMP has previously used police vehicles to accompany a team’s coach but after a review of our core policing responsibilities it was decided that we would no longer provide this service at every fixture.”
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