Jose Mourinho’s side suffered a 1-0 defeat in Thursday’s Europa League opener against Feyenoord, with Tonny Vilhena striking a late victor at De Kuip.
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Tonny Vilhena struck a 79th-minute victor as Feyenoord surprised United at De Kuip stadium in Rotterdam in the opening match of both teams’ UEFA Europa League campaigns.
“We know that in the Europa League everyone wants to play Man United, everyone wants to fight until their limits, which they did”.
The defender, who was making his first start of the season, felt that the team did play with more intensity in the second half of the game but felt that they were outmatched comprehensively in terms of desire by the Feyenoord team. “I think in the second half of the game, in my opinion, we were always in control”. But of course I’m here not to let them be in a negative mood or in a negative period because we lost two matches – two matches where we didn’t play well for 90 minutes but two matches where we deserve a better result.
Midfielder Tonny Trindade de Vilhena broke the deadlock in a tight Group A match when he side-footed the ball just inside David de Gea’s right-hand post in the 79th minute, after running onto a cutback from the right by Nicolai Jorgenson.
United will be back to full strength on Sunday for its away match against Watford in the Premier League.
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. I’m not saying bad, but now with the ambition you need to win football matches. “It would be better if we had the privilege of playing on a Monday after a Thursday game to have one day [recovery] but we didn’t get that privilege”.
“Look I don’t want to personalise”, he added.
The goal sparked United into action but they found ex-Liverpool gloveman Jones impossible to beat.
United didn’t improve much after the break and frustrated by the lethargic performance he had seen in the opening hour Mourinho made three changes in the 63rd minute minute with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Memphis Depay and Ashley Young introduced in place of Rashford, Martial and Juan Mata.
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Feyenoord were tidy and assured, and their build-up play was good at times, but they were largely toothless in attack and even a below-par United should be dispatching teams such as this.
