When José Mourinho arrived at Manchester United this summer, 99% of football fans and writers believed it to signal the end of Juan Mata's United career.
Mourinho sold Mata to United in January 2014 after the Spaniard spent months on Chelsea's bench - this following his winning Chelsea Player Of The Year the previous two seasons.
Mata has gone on to have a solid if unspectacular start to his United career, but his defensive ineffectiveness was perceived to be of huge concern to Mourinho. The Portuguese manager, however, announced on arrival that he saw a place for Mata in his United set-up, and the Spaniard impressed versus Leicester last weekend.
Speaking to Cope following last night's 1-0 victory over Korya in the Europa League, Mata opened up on his own perception of the pair's relationship, dismissing the notion that either man has a personal problem with the other:
My relationship with Mourinho has never been bad.
Many lies were told about me and Mourinho when he arrived at the club this summer and it bothered me that every day I had to read and listen to rumours that weren't true - with him I'm fine.
You read a lot of comments on Facebook and Twitter but they just make you laugh.
United fans will doubtless find it adorable that Mata reads rumours about himself, but with the form he's in currently, it'll come as a relief that any issues between he and the United boss have either been put to bed or didn't really exist in the first place.
Mata went on to say of United and the potential to win trophies at the club:
I really want to lift titles at Manchester United, the Premier League is a trophy I have never won but I believe we can do it with this group.
[Cope]
