United, with Wayne Rooney benched, had this game won at half time, all their goals coming before the break.
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Mourinho was true to his pre-match words as Rooney was dropped for a Premier League game for the first time since Boxing Day 2015 – and ended up a spectator for what was eventually a transformed first-half performance.
Manchester United defeated Leicester City 4 – 1 in what could be described as a come-back game.
Juan Mata, Marcus Rashford and Paul Pogba, with his first United goal following his world record £89mn ($115mn, 102mn euros) arrival from Juventus, were also on target after England captain Rooney was dropped to the substitutes’ bench.
Pogba’s goal was just one of many encouraging aspects of United’s display as they got back on track following two successive league defeat.
“You prefer always to ask why somebody is not playing”, Mourinho said.
“Our intention is obviously to start really well and today we had intensity, we had movement”.
“For them what really is more hard is the fact that myself and Mr van Gaal think about football in a different way so it is normal that in their football brains there are still moments of contradiction between what they were used to do and what I want them to do”.
“I think the team played very well”, Mourinho said. If the team plays well, it is easier to have good individual performances. So it was more about control, and we wanted a little bit more. “He is my man and I trust him completely”.
“We started well for the first time”.
All the talk in the buildup to the match was United’s team sheet, which had been released a good hour prior to kickoff and did not include Wayne Rooney’s name in the starting XI.
Islam Slimani, Jamie Vardy and even Robert Huth had their chances in the opening twenty minutes of the match but it was Chris Smalling, United’s stand-in captain, who opened the scoring off a Daley Blind corner 23 minutes in, putting a powerful header into the back of the net past Leicester keeper Ron-Robert Zieler.
And Ranieri’s side have now equalled the three Premier League defeats they suffered in the entirety of their title winning season.
“We started to try to do something but alone, not as a team”.
“The last thing I want to do is hurt players”.
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Till this game Pogba had struggled to live up to his £89mn price tag since his arrival from Juventus, as most players would, but he was magnificent against Claudio Ranieri’s side and thoroughly deserved his first goal for the club amidst the rout. “To beat the champions twice this season when we didn’t beat them at all last season shows how good we were”.
