Patrick Rees
Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho, made a shocking omission from the squad that thrashed the reigning Premier League champions Leicester City last weekend. Captain Wayne Mark Rooney was named on the bench and the youngsters, namely, Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford were named in the starting line-up, while his former Chelsea employee, Juan Mata, was deployed on the number 10 role.
Manchester United, who recently faced three back to back defeats in all competition, fired all the cylinders against Leicester and completely outnumbered them by a thumping scoreline of four goals to one. Chris Smalling – the skipper for the afternoon – opened the scoring for the Devils. Then a great team work involving Pogba, Lingard and Mata doubled the lead and then Rashford and Pogba made the scoreline comfortable than ever.
Rooney, who observed the majority of the game from the bench, was introduced in the final seven minutes of the match replacing Rashford and many questions were raised after the game, but Jose Mourinho answered them in style. The manager then went on to explain his decision of dropping the skipper:
“When our main striker is Zlatan, we need fast people surrounding him.
“If he [Rooney] is on the pitch or at home, he is my captain. But we thought against a team like Leicester, the best solution for us was to play with the two fast kids and Mata in a position where he can interact with them. It did well for us.
“It was a good performance, the intensity of our pressure, our counter-attacks, the way we reached when we lost the ball.
“The young kids were fast and pressing and attacking spaces. Zlatan played very well in organisation of the attack.”
