Jose Mourinho was frank in the aftermath of Manchester United’s derby defeat on Saturday, admitting one big error had cost his team victory.
The United manager gave a full debut to summer signing Henrikh Mkhitaryan and a start to Jesse Lingard, both of whom underperformed in the first half.
And Mourinho revealed he had erred in starting with those two players instead of Rashford: “I felt they [City] had fragility on the sides and the kid [Rashford] could give us in the second half what we didn’t get from Micki [Mkhitaryan] and Jesse in the first half.
“You never know the way players are going to react, especially when you don’t know them so well and, after only a couple of months, it is too early to know them really well. Let’s speak for example about Mkhitaryan — how many big matches has he played? The kid Jesse — how many times has he played big matches? But Ander Herrera came on and he was phenomenal in his attitude.”
United’s defeat was its first in the league this season, ending its perfect start to the English Premier League season under Mourinho.
The Portuguese’s next date is a game in Rotterdam against Feyenoord on Thursday in the UEFA Europa League.
.Newsweek