Jose Mourinho had seemingly looked forward to working with Paddy McNair.
Shortly after being appointed Manchester United manager last summer, Mourinho sent a text message to the young defender to wish him luck with Northern Ireland at Euro 2016.
It was a class gesture and one which suggested that Mourinho didn’t harbour plans to part ways with McNair.
However it wasn’t long before McNair was signing on the dotted line to become a Sunderland player but, in a new revelatory interview, McNair has explained that ‘The Special One’ didn’t want him to leave on a permanent deal.
Mourinho initially wanted the 21-year-old, who made 27 appearances for the Red Devils, to join Sunderland on a season-long loan move but McNair had other ideas.
“He wanted me to go on loan and I went in to see Jose and just said ‘look, if you don’t let me go on a permanent, I’m just going to stay here,'” McNair told the BBC.
“That’s how strongly I thought about it. At the time, it’s what I wanted so I’ve got no regrets. I think he quite liked how I was straight up. I said I wanted to leave, that I didn’t want to go on loan.
“I think he respected that. I told him that I’d been here since I was 12-years-old and the club could at least let me do what I want to do. I spoke to Ed Woodward and said the same to him. I was refusing to go on loan basically. I just wanted a new challenge and off I went.”
McNair has featured nine times for Sunderland since his summer move and played a starring role for the Black Cats in their EFL Cup third round clash with QPR, when McNair popped up with two goals in the second half to give his side the win.
