Jose Mourinho once again came out with a public criticism of his Manchester United squad after watching his team only manage a 1-1 draw with Anderlecht in the Europa League.
This competition remains as the best opportunity for Manchester United to reach the Champions League group stages next season. However, the club lost a golden opportunity to go one step closer towards securing a place in the semifinals, as they could only get a 1-1 draw with the Belgian outfit. Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored for the fourth consecutive European away game, but United were unable to build on this goal.
The club had numerous chances over the 90 minutes. An incredible 16 shots on target clearly showed the dominant team in the match, but United were unable to convert this dominance into goals. The home team were able to take full advantage of this lack of clinical finishing by scoring in the 86th minute throughDendoncker.
Even though United will still feel confident about progressing to the next stages due to the away goal, the result could have been far more comfortable. Mourinho branded the forwards as sloppy for failing to capitalise on the numerous opportunities. The club have a big match against Chelsea during the weekend followed by the return leg next week.
“The result is positive. To play at home with an advantage, starting the game with an advantage is good, it is a good result in any case.But I think the result should be much better, and 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 on the ball, and then we gave them opportunities to have some counter attacks,” said Mourinho.