Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho to escape FA punishment for Southampton dismissal

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho will not face any further punishment from the Football Association after he was sent off during Saturday’s game against Southampton.

Mourinho was dismissed from the touchline in the closing stages of his side’s 1-0 win at St Mary’s Stadium for ‘encroaching on the pitch’ as he tried to get messages out to his players in a frantic end to the game.

Now it has been confirmed that Mourinho will not face a disrepute charge and will not even receive a warning from the FA, in a verdict that will be welcomed by the United manager.

Mourinho was unusually polite about his sending off after the game, as he refused to criticise the match officials in an approach that contrasted previous incidents when he lambasted referees and their assistants and was then handed fines and touchlines bans by the FA.

His new conciliatory approach seems to have paid off here and the decision will be welcomed by United legend Bryan Robson, who suggested Mourinho’s sending off was unnecessary.

“When I saw it on TV, I thought it was an absolute joke,” Robson told ManUtd.com. “I think the officials went way overboard by sending him to the stand.

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“I don’t know what the officials are thinking about. Throughout the last year or so, I’ve seen managers like (Jurgen) Klopp and (Antonio) Conte run about like lunatics, out of their box, down the side of the pitch and not a thing has been made of it – it’s called passion for the team.

“Because Mourinho stepped just over the touchline, they sent him to the stands. It’ll be a disgrace if he gets fined or banned and made to watch games from the stands over the coming weeks.

“The regulation is there and as a manager you know that. You basically stick to that and it does play on all the managers’ minds that you can’t step out of your box.

“In the heat of the game, you can stray outside your technical area – everybody does. But as long as it’s not over the top where you’re actually going onto the pitch, then you can’t be sending managers off, banning them and fining them for the sort of incident we saw with Mourinho at St Mary’s. That would be ridiculous.

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“In that situation, when you’re 1-0 up in injury time, who’s going to be looking at the white line? As a manager, you’re looking at the game and trying to get information to your players. If Mourinho had actually gone on to the pitch fully, then yes, ok – the guidelines are there and we all know the rules, but he didn’t do that.

“I know that if we went back through videos of every single game of this season, every single manager would be sent to the stands for going out of their technical area and in a way that was much worse than what Mourinho did.”