Jose Mourinho is not the type of manager who is afraid to make an unorthodox decision.
He’s also not the kind who puts the feelings of his players, as individuals, over what matters most to him, which is winning.
That’s all the Manchester United boss cares about and the ruthless pursuit of victory is what has turned him into arguably the best in the world at what he does.
Victory didn’t come for Mourinho on Saturday, when he oversaw a 2-1 defeat to arch-rivals Manchester City at Old Trafford but it wasn’t for a want of trying as he made a bold decision at half-time.
Noticing that several of his players were struggling with the intensity of their opponents, Mourinho made two changes at the break by replacing Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jesse Lingard with Ander Herrera and Marcus Rashford.
“I’m clearly disappointed with the the first-half,” Mourinho said, as quoted by MEN. “Disappointed with some really poor individual performances that affected the level of the team.
“It was not just about them [Mkhitaryan and Lingard]. Other players were also not playing really well and obviously, as well as my decision, I don’t like to go in the direction of singling out players. Let’s say our team didn’t play well in the first-half and their responsibilities are my responsibilities.
“We didn’t have a tactical problem, we had problems with poor performances, we lost the ball very, very easy. Even now our central defenders today they lost easy balls, bad passes, first station passes from Bailly to Fellaini and Blind to Pogba. We lost the ball in these kind of positions, so it was not Mikhi and Jesse it was much more than Mikhi and Jesse.”
While there were no goals in the second half, there was a marked improvement in terms of improvement for United as they enjoyed more meaningful possession than they did before the break.
“I made a couple of decisions that I thought individual qualities of certain players would give me what I know that I want and I didn’t get it,” Mourinho added.
“And at the same time because we were losing the ball so easily under the pressing we were making, we were never able to bring the defensive line up, so we stayed with the defensive line in our half.
“I didn’t change after 20 minutes because I don’t want to destroy the players, I didn’t want to make three changes at half-time because I was afraid in a long 45 minutes something might happen, but if it was a sport in free number of changes and with changes during the first-half is normal, like basketball, I would do after 20 minutes.
“But I did at half-time, we changed the direction of the game but we didn’t get the compensation I think we deserved in the second half.”
