Jose Mourinho has denied reports that his relationship with Paul Pogba has broken down and that the player wants to leave Manchester United.

“You can call it speculation, I would call it a lot of lies,” Mourinho said. “Paul accepts he has not been playing well in the last few matches, but that is all. It is a big lie that we don’t communicate, that we don’t agree about his best position and that we don’t have a good relationship.

“It is my problem that he is not playing well at the moment, but he will play in the FA Cup against Huddersfield, and that is the end of the story. We don’t fight every day and we don’t want to sell. I don’t want to be nasty to the punditry industry in this country – it must be the biggest in the world and they are being paid millions – but it is ridiculous to talk about Paul being played out of position.

“Against Newcastle Paul played in midfield, we had a six [Nemanja Matic] and two eights [Jesse Lingard and Pogba], with Paul on the left hand side. If you ask Paul what is his preferred formation it is 4-3-3. If you ask him where he likes to play in that formation it is eight, on the left. That is exactly what he was doing against Newcastle.”