Mourinho had not meant to use Pogba for the full 90 minutes but saw no reason to call an early end to his happy homecoming.
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Former Southampton defender Luke Shaw was fouled inside the penalty area by a clumsy Jordy Clasie, who made a poor challenge on the United left-back – giving referee Anthony Taylor no other choice but to point to the spot.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic overshadowed Pogba by scoring both goals in the 2-0 win at Old Trafford, but the France global put in an outstanding performance in the centre of the park on his debut after a world record £89.3 million move from Juventus.
They chanted in tribute to Ibrahimovic who scored the first goal from a header then added a second from a penalty, and the former Paris Saint-Germain striker said: “The supporters at United are incredible and I have this feeling in every game that I’ve played that they are the 12th player on the field”.
“I don’t know which position he played”, admitted Mourinho with a smile.
“I told him just simply “forget everything you read, forget everything, with me you don’t leave for sure”. The kind of football we are trying to play.
“The first ball, I lost it, but got used to it”.
“So I need September – [Timothy] Fosu-Mensah, [Marcos] Rojo, Carrick, [Morgan] Schneiderlin, Memphis, [Marcus] Rashford, we have a big top-quality squad”.
He had only trained with his new team-mates for around 10 days and manager Jose Mourinho said before the game that he was not capable of producing a “super performance”.
“Everything is new. It’s like a big puzzle, we need to put the puzzle together”.
Paul Pogba also made his second United debut in the match.
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For Ibrahimovic, who named Man of the Match, it was four goals in three games. “If he keeps playing like that, like I said the price tag won’t be mentioned”. As a manager I am really young, and I think I have the best years of my career to come up. I’m not been here a month, Paul is back at his home but has not been with the team for long, we need to get to know everybody and the simple things, outside the pitch and inside the pitch. We are becoming better and better. They are creating a good relationship with the team, with the players, even players I could feel the relationship was [previously] not the best, the players are growing that.
