Mourinho's Verdict On Leicester Draw

Jose Mourinho felt missed opportunities proved costly for his Manchester United team in the 2-2 draw at Leicester City on Saturday evening.

The Reds were denied victory in our final away game of 2017 in the dying stages at the King Power Stadium by Harry Maguire’s last-gasp equaliser.

United were left to rue profligacy, particularly in the second half, with a number of players all passing up good chances.

Read the key points from the boss in his post-match interview with Sky Sports and in his press conference…

WE MISSED INCREDIBLE CHANCES
“We didn't win because we missed incredible chances. I would say joke chances. We made a big defensive accumulation of mistakes in an easy match to win. I talked to the players at half-time when it was 1-1 that it was an easy match to win. The reality is that it is 2-2. Sometimes you make mistakes and are not punished by that. Tonight we were punished by our mistakes. We did everything to win but when you lose big chances. Childish loss of possession, so easy. Childish in their box and childish in our box. We were punished with [losing] two points.”

DOES A DRAW FEEL LIKE A DEFEAT?
“Exactly, sometimes you take a point and you say okay and you say [it was] hard to get it and you accept the point as a positive result, but that's not the case. It was a game to win easily and so it’s easy to say we lost the points.”

SMALLING INJURED FOR LEICESTER LEVELLER
“Yes, and I had the chance to speak with Ashley Young to tell him the way the team had to be in position because of Smalling's difficulty but I think a lack of maturity because I cannot stop the game to give a team-talk for the last two minutes. The players immediately have to adapt and read the game and they didn't, we had childish decisions in front of goal, bad decisions. It was not about the dribbling and hit the bar, it was not just about the cases with an open goal, it was easy decisions to make to counter-attack.”

WAS RASHFORD FOULED IN THE BOX?
“You know that our players that are, I don't know the word, in some other cultures people used to call intelligent players in the English culture it depends on the player, the club. I remember last year Marcus had quite an easy penalty against Swansea and he was killed and some other players keep doing the same and worse, and keep getting protected. I don't know if it was a penalty, I know [Jon] Moss [the referee] had a good performance, Leicester fans were complaining without any reason, the yellow card for Mahrez is a yellow card because he dived, if it was a pen, and he didn't give it, I'm not critical at all because Moss had a very good performance, and if Marcus was not intelligent like some other guys are that's it.”

IS THE TEAM MAKING PROGRESS?
“I'm not looking to that, I'm looking at this match. In half an hour I'll be looking to the next match and the only thing I can say is that it was an easy match to win, at 1-1, it can be my weakness, I told them more than one time the match is very easy to win and we didn't.”