Romelu Lukaku scored the game’s only goal to help Manchester United beat Bournemouth 1-0 at Old Trafford on Wednesday. With this win, the second placed United also managed to maintain an 11-point gap to league leaders Manchester City.
Happy with the result, Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho was in all praise for Luke Shaw — who claimed his second Man-of-the-Match award — and Scott McTominay.
Talking to MUTV, Mourinho said, “Both were very good. Luke was really good and improving, but then, later in the game, he was feeling cramp and they [Bournemouth] felt that and were trying to go through that side so it was important to bring Ashley Young to the game. The reaction of the crowd [when he was replaced] pleased me too because there is no better thing for a player than that.”
Meanwhile, 21-year-old Scott McTominay came up with a superb performance, covering 12.18km in the match and had special words for him from Mourinho. The coach told reporters, “It didn’t look like it was any different for him to play in another match and another competition. He is ready to play, he had 90 minutes today, he had 90 minutes against CSKA [Moscow] and he is ready to play.”
Explaining why he left Henrikh Mkhitaryan out of the squad, Mourinho said that he had a lot options in the midfield and attacking positions which meant that there was competition for every place in the starting line-up and on the bench.
“I can only have six [outfield] players on the bench and I try to have some balance on the bench – I had two defenders and [Daley] Blind who can play in different areas. I had Ashley Young to cover me all of the wing and the wing-back position. “I had [Ander] Herrera as a midfield player, Zlatan [Ibrahimovic] as a striker and Marcus [Rashford] as a second striker and winger. I played [Anthony] Martial, [Juan] Mata and [Jesse] Lingard in the team. To have Micki means that I don’t have one of them and, in this moment, I believe the other ones they deserve [the chance to play],” he explained.
With inputs from agencies and official website of Manchester United.