Three minutes before the break United racked up their fourth.
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It was the second successive Premier League away game in which Leicester had shipped four goals after doing so at Liverpool two weeks ago.
It worked, with United’s front players tearing Leicester apart in the first half, including a spell of three goals in five minutes. If he is on the pitch or he is at home, he is my captain, so that is not a problem.
If this was the old Manchester United at work, it also looked suspiciously like the old Leicester City. Blind played the first low into the inside-left channel, where Mata struck it hard across the face of goal, and Rashford finished.
Ibrahimovic then went close to a goal after collecting a fabulous pass by Pogba, but the Swede’s effort on the turn just cleared the bar.
Minutes later and it could have been two as United began to turn the screw. Ander Herrera was outstanding in midfield.
The opener appeared to remove the shackles as the home side grew in confidence and attacked with panache. A quick corner from Blind three minutes later found Mata again who squared for Rashford to slide the ball in for United’s third goal and second in quick succession. Blind provided yet another fine corner and Pogba rose to impressively send a header past Zieler. At half-time Ranieri replaced Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez to save the legs of his key players for the Champions League game against Porto on Tuesday.
Gray then went within a whisker of replicating his stunning goal with an nearly identical effort which De Gea scrambled back to push over the bar.
There was late drama at Stoke City, where West Bromwich Albion forward Salomon Rondon rescued a point for Tony Pulis in his 1,000th game as a manager, whose opposite number Mark Hughes was denied a first league win of the season.
Mourinho said: “Myself and Mr Van Gaal think football in a different way so it is normal that in their football brains there is still moments of contradiction about what they used to do and what I want then to do”.
That had only been seen in flashes so far, but it was much more present in Manchester United’s 4-1 win over Leicester on Saturday.
He’s the modern footballer you’d design in a lab – skilful, strong and smart, and his only weakness is really that he doesn’t display all of his outrageous gifts often enough.
‘It is true that we came here after two defeats in the Premier League, we won the cup game during the week but we needed something like this, you know?
“It was a very good performance”.
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Mourinho refused to speak about any more of his players and said that it was the team as a whole that performed brilliantly rather than individuals.
