Mourinho Reacts To Anderlecht Draw

Jose Mourinho was disappointed his Manchester United side could not turn their dominance into victory in Thursday night’s Europa League draw against Anderlecht.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s first-half goal was cancelled out by Leander Dendoncker late on as the Reds drew 1-1 in the first leg of the quarter-final in Brussels, leaving the tie open heading into next week’s return at Old Trafford.

Read what the boss had to say in his post-match interview with BT Sport and press conference...

Positive result but could have been better
“The result is positive – to play at home with an advantage, to start the game with an advantage, it is a good result but I think the result should be much better. We can only blame ourselves because we had an easy game to play in the second half and we didn’t play in attack with that instinct. We lost the ball easily too many times, we stopped our counter-attacks because of sloppy decisions, sloppy touches of the ball and then we gave them opportunity to have some counter-attacks. But luckily our defenders were very much in the game and they resolved all of these problems. But if I were a Manchester United defender I would be very upset with the attacking players because they have to kill the game and they didn’t.”

Need to kill off matches
“We have to kill matches. We had chances, control, but we don't score goals; we risk. There was lots of space to kill, good chances. Lots of chances that we don't get because of a bad touch, sloppy touch, a flick, bad decisions in the last third. There was a team with good organisation at the back, but one mistake and we were punished.

“In my poor English I cannot find a better word [than sloppy]. You have to play more seriously. Put the performance of two or three of our attacking players together and you squeeze not much juice out of it. Rashford, Lingard, Ibrahimovic, Martial. They were very similar. But the people behind: very solid, very focused. The defenders did the serious work but the people who had to kill the game didn't. We start the game at Old Trafford in front, but we had all the conditions to kill the game.”

Strong defensive performance
“It was a strong performance from the team from a defensive point of view. [Jesse] Lingard, [Henrikh] Mkhitaryan, [Marcus] Rashford – they did defensively what we asked them to do, to compact the team, to control direct opponents, to cover some spaces. We were very solid defensively and that is not just about the defenders, it’s about the team as a team. But then when the team is broken, because we go to counter attack, we cannot lose so many balls because it’s not just about the chances we missed because we didn’t miss so many chances, it’s about half-chances. The chances where we feel the space is there, the time is there, the end decision is wrong. Sometimes where you have to play two-touch, we play one touch and lose the ball. Other times you have to play one touch, you keep the ball, you turn, one more touch, you lose the ball. It looks like the decisions were wrong and probably the only one that everything was correct, the timings, the touches, the decisions was Paul [Pogba]’s shot, which was a good save by the keeper but obviously this is what happened to us all season, we have chances, we don’t score enough goals.”