United lost at home to City in the Manchester derby last Saturday and subsequently left the Netherlands empty-handed following a 0-1 defeat to Feyenoord Rotterdam in the Europa League group stage contest on Thursday.
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Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side got the better of Mourinho’s United with a 1-0 triumph at De Kuip in their opening Europa League group match hanks to Tonny Villein’s late victor.
For the second game in succession, Manchester United fell to a defeat, losing late on to Feyenoord in Group A of the UEFA Europa League.
They have played 58 games without him in all competitions in that period, winning 28 (48 percent of games.) The forward made his United debut in 2004, with the most prolific season being in 2011-12 as he struck 34 goals in 43 appearances in all competitions. Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial were the two offensive players used for the match, but they did not have much impact and could not find the back of the net.
Manchester United’s hard evening in Rotterdam was almost made worse as Chris Smalling nearly missed the flight home after struggling to produce a sample at doping control. I think we kept our plan no matter which player played.
“You can say I changed eight players”.
“I am very pragmatic in my approach”.
In a bid to shake things up, Mourinho made eight changes to the team that had started on the weekend.
The evening at Rotterdam had already turned sour for the Manchester team after they slipped to a 1-0 defeat to Feyenoord, but things were made worse for stand-in captain, Chris Smalling, who nearly missed the flight home.
Mourinho had seen enough and brought on Zlatan Ibrahimovic in a bid to add some spark to United’s attack. “I know they want to win, they want to work and that is what we have to do”.
Mourinho also felt hard done by Feyenoord’s victor, with suspicions of offside against Nicolai Jorgensen, who provided the assist for Vilhena.
United’s latest reverse leaves them six points adrift of the early Premier League leaders, Pep Guardiola’s City, and puts Mourinho under immediate pressure to turn their results around.
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Marcos Rojo will start in defence in place of England global Shaw, while Mourinho had previously stated that striker Marcus Rashford would make his first start of the season on Thursday.
