Mourinho blasts Man U's strikers for Anderlecht stalemate
London [U.K], Apr.14 (ANI): Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has lashed out at the side's `sloppy` attackers after Anderlecht grabbed a late equalizer to settle with a 1-1 stalemate in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final clash at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium on Friday.
ANI
Apr 14, 2017 15:34 IST
London [U.K], Apr.14 (ANI): Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has lashed out at the side's `sloppy` attackers after Anderlecht grabbed a late equalizer to settle with a 1-1 stalemate in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final clash at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium on Friday. Henrikh Mkhitaryan put his side ahead by tapping in from a tight angle after Marcus Rashford's shot was spilled in the first half. United dominated their Belgian hosts for much of the match, but were made to rue not taking their chances as Dendoncker got in front of Matteo Darmian to head an equaliser with Anderlecht's first effort on goal four minutes from time. "If I was a United defender I would be very upset with the attacking players because they have to kill the game and they didn't. 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 didn't play in attack with that [killer] instinct," the Guardian quoted Mourinho as saying. Mourinho singled out that the four front players who started as well as second-half substitute Martial are culpable for the disappointing first-leg stalemate. "Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Anthony I think they were very similar [not doing enough]," the Portuguese said. When asked why United struggled to score more goals, Mourinho said, "We lost the ball easily too many times, we stopped our counter attacks because of sloppy touches, sloppy decisions. And then we gave them the opportunity to have some counter attacks and luckily our defenders were very much in the game and they resolved all these problems." United's attack lags well behind the rest of their top-four rivals in the Premier League, having registered only 46 goals. Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal have all managed more than 60 goals so far. And Mourinho admitted that his attackers have to become much more focused and need to play more seriously. "You have to play more seriously. We put all together the performance of two or three of our attacking players and you squeeze not much juice out of it and the people behind were not focused." United will now look to advance to the semi-finals of the Europa League when they host Anderlecht in the return leg on April 21. (ANI)
Get the App
