Jose Mourinho explains reason behind Zlatan Ibrahimovic's early substitution in Burnley draw
The forward was brought off at half-time against the Clarets to cut short his first Premier League start of the season
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Your support makes all the difference.Jose Mourinho has explained that the decision to bring Zlatan Ibrahimovic off at half-time against Burnley, thus cutting short his first Premier League start of the season, was purely tactical.
Manchester United found themselves 2-0 down at the break against Sean Dyche’s high-flying Clarets after a goal apiece from Ashley Barnes and Steven Defour.
Ibrahimovic was subsequently substituted at the interval alongside Marcos Rojo as Mourinho brought Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan into the fray.
The changes paid off, with Lingered striking twice, the latter of which came in stoppage time, to salvage a point for the hosts.
"[It] was tactical, play only with one central defender. We know that they don't normally have the ball, they just play direct," Mourinho explained after the 2-2 draw on Boxing Day.
"So really in the line-up, play one against one, [Phil] Jones was a risk Jones accepted, [Nemanja] Matic was there just to bring the ball from totally free positions, so he was bringing lots of balls into midfield.
"And then instead of more positional players like Zlatan and [Romelu] Lukaku, we decided to go with Mkhitaryan, Lingard and [Juan] Mata all three trying to play in these areas behind Lukaku and we can say we had some success.
"I still think with so many balls in important areas, lots of crosses, good crosses, low crosses, we didn't attack all these balls well, and also not lucky with the rebounds, so I'm happy with the effort, the personality, the feeling of we didn't lose but of course we lost two points."
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