Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba has broken his silence on their derby fixture defeat to Pep Guardiola’s Man City. Paul Po...
Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba has broken his silence on their derby fixture defeat to Pep Guardiola’s Man City. Paul Pogba insists Manchester United will learn from their derby defeat to City at Old Trafford, reports Manchester Evening News.
The Premier League leaders schooled United in the first-half but United rallied after Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s brilliant strike and should have been awarded a second-half penalty for Claudio Bravo’s lunge on Wayne Rooney. Pogba was one of a number of United players who badly under-performed and, having told journalists in the mixed zone he ‘doesn’t speak’, he gave his Instagram followers an update. Pogba posted: “The season is just starting, we don’t lose, we learn. United we stand.”
Mourinho felt individual performances affected United’s approach against Pep Guardiola’s side. “I’m clearly disappointed with the the first-half,” Mourinho stressed. “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. “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,” he 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.”
COMMENTS