Despite seeing his side book their place in the semi-finals of the FA Cup after a 2-0 win against Brighton, Man Utd boss Jose Mourinho was once again unimpressed by his players’ display on a snowy night at Old Trafford.
Mourinho left superstars Alexis Sanchez and Paul Pogba on the bench but yet again his charges produced a limp display which left the home fans frustrated.
Romelu Lukaku did open the scoring for the Red Devils before the break, with the Belgian hitman heading home from a Nemanja Matic centre.
At the break, Mourinho hauled off Luke Shaw despite a decent 45 minutes from the defender, replacing him with Ashley Young.
Brighton impressed in the second period, with Jurgen Locadia missing a number of decent opportunities to get on the scoresheet and Pascal Gross also going close.
However, late on, Matic would add a goal to his assist to seal a 2-0 win for the Mancunians.
The win sees the Red Devils move into the semi-finals, with silverware still on the table despite an overall disappointing campaign.
After the game, Mourinho was once again quick to point the finger, this time at his players, saying:
We didn’t play as I wanted them to play; we didn’t play as I prepared the team to play.
We deserved to win, clearly – we had the match under control – but we didn’t play well. Sometimes there is a contradiction between what you work on in the past two days and what you did on the pitch.
That is more frustrating than the result. Once more I wasn’t happy with the connection in the build-up. I blame everybody.
Mourinho also didn’t hold back on explaining why he hauled off Shaw at the break, saying:
It is my decision. We worked on certain kinds of movements, where it was really important the two full-backs were aggressive, created space for Matic and were in front of the two central defenders. I didn’t have that.
I had to change one and I chose Luke because at least Antonio defensively was capable of good positioning. Luke, in the first half, every time they came in his corridor, the cross came in and a dangerous situation was coming. I was not happy with his performance.
Ouch. That’s certainly not the first time Shaw has found himself in his manager’s bad-books.
Here’s the United boss’ post-match interview…
At least Jose is providing us with more entertainment off the pitch than his team is managing on it.