Injection of risk salvaged point from a poor night
JOSE Mourino conceded playing two ‘positional’ players in Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Romelu Lukaku backfired during United’s Boxing Day draw with Burnley at Old Trafford.
The Reds trailed at the break 2-0 and Mourinho reacted by withdrawing the error-prone Marcos Rojo and struggling Ibrahimovic for Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
Lingard wasted an easy chance to score early in the second half before executing an ingenious flick past Burnley goalkeeper Nick Pope and then going on to equalise in stoppage-time to earn United a point.
Ibrahimovic, 36, was starting his first Premier League game since April 9 and was ineffectual alongside Lukaku. Mourinho believes United were livelier with Lingard, Mkhitaryan and Juan Mata playing behind Lukaku.
“It was tactical, play only with one central defender. We know that they don’t normally have the ball, they just play direct.
“So really in the line-up, play one against one. Jones was a risk. Matic was there just to bring the ball from totally free positions, so he was bringing lots of balls into midfield.
“And then instead of more positional players like Zlatan and Lukaku, we decided to go with Mkhitaryan, Lingard and Mata, all three trying to play in these areas behind Lukaku and we can say we had some success.
“I still think with so many balls in important areas, lots of crosses, good crosses, low crosses, we didn’t attack all these balls well, and also we were not lucky with the rebounds. So I’m happy with the effort, the personality, the feeling of we didn’t lose but, of course, we lost two points.” Mourinho also claimed United are conceding ‘s***’ goals after they succumbed from two more set-pieces against Burnley.
Lukaku bungled two headers to gift City their goals in the derby and the Belgian’s miscued header allowed Ashley Barnes to give Burnley a second-minute lead at Old Trafford.
Steven Defour extended Burnley’s advantage with an excellent freekick nine minutes before half-time, and Rojo was substituted at the interval.
United have started with three different defensive partnerships in their past four games and conceded seven goals. Four of them have come from set-pieces or crosses into David de Gea’s area and it is vexing Mourinho.
“The problem with the first-half performance – you are intelligent, you don’t need me to tell the whole world, another s*** goal.
“So that obviously has an impact in the game, then 2-0 makes things more difficult.
“At half-time I need my players to believe in themselves, to believe in me and accept the risk.
“I’m very happy with their character.”