Mourinho Promises A Surprise For Opponents

Jose Mourinho says his Manchester United side will try to spring surprises on opposition teams whenever it is possible.

The Reds boss was referring to last weekend's tactical change at Leicester City when he switched Henrikh Mkhitaryan's position to such great effect.

The attacker had been part of a front three with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marcus Rashford, with Juan Mata offering support just behind, but a change in formation midway through the first half at the King Power Stadium saw Mkhitaryan dropping in behind Ibrahimovic through the middle.

A fine solo goal, an assist for Mata and a Man-of-the-Match award followed for the Armenian and Mourinho was full of praise for him when he was asked about the role he took up against Foxes. The United boss also hailed his side's ability to mix things up and use the element of surprise whenever it may be needed in matches.

"I will use him everywhere I need," declared Mourinho at Friday's press conference, when asked about where he sees Mkhitaryan's strongest position.

"I played him left-back, you know, so he's ready. His mentality changed, his profile as a player is there; it's the same and doesn't change, but the mentality changed, the approach changed.

"He's ready to play for us and what we did in the last weekend is something we are going to do more and more and more - start with a system and try to surprise the opponent, but the team is ready to go back and to change during the match. This is something that you can only do with some maturity, with some work, with some time, with some knowledge of what your players can do and, during that week, we train both things. 

"We were ready for this and we were ready for that and I told the players to change," he continued. "I don't need to change players, I just need to change the roles on the pitch but I don't need to make any changes. So, be ready because after five minutes, after 10, after 20 maybe, we are going to change.

"I think we have more and more and more capacity to try to do these things and to try to surprise opponents or to create difficulties for them during the match."