Mourinho laughs after being quizzed about Ndombele's defending vs Wolves

You can either laugh or cry about it, but Jose Mourinho opted for the former after being asked about Tanguy Ndombele's woeful defending against Wolves on Sunday.

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A clip has gone viral on social media in the last couple of days of Tottenham midfielder Ndombele sluggishly tracking back against Wolves' Pedro Neto, who nearly set up a goal for the visitors in the second half.

In the video, Neto can be seen cleverly skipping past Harry Winks before effortlessly evading the challenge of Ndombele, who instead of sprinting, decided to jog back with the Wolves star hunting down the goal.

After nearly waltzing half the pitch unchallenged, Neto then offloaded to Raul Jimenez, who blazed the ball over the crossbar from the edge of the penalty area.

And ahead of Wednesday's FA Cup encounter at home to Norwich, Mourinho was asked whether he had seen the social media clip of Ndombele's lazy defending.

Amusingly, as soon as he was quizzed on the matter, Mourinho was seen laughing before putting his hands to his face.

He then replied with a smirk on his face: 'Pedro Neto is very fast. He is! He is very fast. But Wolves does fantastic work in the selection of the profile of their players for many years.

'They know what they want and they choose the profile of player adapted to the qualities of the team.

'We had 65 per cent of the ball and we almost doubled that number of passes.

'But they are very fast. [Adama] Traore, [Diogo] Jota, Pedro Neto, [Daniel] Podence, all of them they are very, very fast and it was impossible for Tanduy to get him.'

Many fans have questioned Ndombele's fitness following his club-record £65million move to Tottenham from Lyon in the summer.

And Ndombele has already had a bit of tension with Mourinho back in December when the latter was forced to kill off suggestions he had a problem with the midfielder.

Ndombele told Mourinho on Christmas Day that he didn't want to be considered for their clash against Brighton on Boxing Day due to fitness concerns.

After that victory, Mourinho explained: 'I can't tell you he is injured, but I can say that yesterday he told me he was not feeling in conditions to play the game. Not based on injury but based on fears of previous injuries he's had since the beginning of the season.'

The Tottenham boss then insisted he respected Ndombele's honesty.

Mourinho added: 'I think Ndombele was honest. Football players like to play football. For him to say I don't feel confident, I don't feel in the best condition due to my previous injuries, he was just being honest.

'Against Brighton we had solutions. We had (Eric) Dier, we had (Harry) Winks, we have (Oliver) Skipp, who is a great kid fighting to improve, for a place. We had solutions, but against Norwich (we have) less solutions. But let's see.

'I hope after training he can come back to me and say, "I'm ready to help the team."'