Manchester United manager José Mourinho bemoaned poor individual performances from several of his players during the Manchester derby defeat against City, as well as criticising referee Mark Clattenburg for several of his decisions.
Mourinho was not happy that Clattenburg failed to punish City keeper Claudio Bravo for an apparent studs-up challenge on Wayne Rooney in the box during the second half, as well as failing to spot a handball by City defender Nicolas Otamendi later.
In his post-match interview with Sky Sports, he said:
I am very disappointed with two decisions from Mark [Clattenburg], because it’s a penalty and a red card for Bravo.
If you tell me that that’s not a penalty and a red card, I’ll tell you that for sure outside the box it is a free-kick and a red card. Inside the box it has to be the same, but obviously even the best referees make mistakes, and he made a big one.
The second one is also a penalty, Otamendi is a penalty, you can tell me he has no intention, I think he has intention.
The arm behind the body, he knows that the cross is not going in his face, it’s going in his back, and he drops the elbow back, so two penalties.
Mourinho also criticised the performance of several of his players as the Reds went 2-0 down midway through the first-half after Kevin de Bruyne and Kelechi Iheanacho scored before Zlatan Ibrahimovic halved the deficit with a volley just before half-time.
Among those underperformers were Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who were given starts by the United manager but were hauled off at half-time as Mourinho attempted to turn things around.
The United boss admitted that he may have made some selection mistakes:
Honestly, I had two or three players in the first half, that if the game is now and I know what is going to happen, obviously I don’t play them. But this is football, and sometimes players disappoint managers, and sometimes players give us great surprises.
I thought because of the characteristics of the game that we could hurt them with some individuals with some qualities, they didn’t give me what I want. It’s their fault? It’s my fault? It’s my fault, because I’m the manager and it’s always my fault because it’s my choice.
I think in the first half they were much better than us. We started the game bad, with some players really below the normal level, in terms of concentration, mental availability to play a game of this speed.
You need to be sharp, the way you think and play, we had a few players below the level, and the team paid for it.
We scored a goal late in the first half, and we could have immediately scored another, but I think it was outside the context of the game in the first half.
However, Mourinho said he saw the positives in United’s improved second-half performance, but the result was obviously a disappointment:
The positives are the spirit of the group, the mentality to play in the second half, taking enormous risks against a team who was defending and waiting for a chance to counter-attack, and obviously, we are very disappointed with the result.
