Sports

Mourinho slams ‘confused’ Manchester United performance vs West Ham

Published

5 years ago

September 22, 2019

United produced a laboured display in the opening 45 minutes at the London Stadium and were punished by an Andriy Yarmolenko strike late in the first half to give the Hammers a 1-0 lead.

It was a moment of brilliance from the Ukrainian, though Mourinho and former United captain Roy Keane were both very critical of the performance while analysing the game at half time Sky Sports.Former boss Mourinho picked out Andreas Pereira and Nemanja Matic for not pressing West Ham’s forwards in the lead-up to the goal.

“At this moment I think United is missing everything,” he said.

“It looks to me a set game, a game of let’s see what is going to happen.

“Going back to Roy’s comments (on United not pressing the ball) which I have to agree totally with, sometimes players are a bit confused and it’s difficult for them to understand.

“I always think that when a block is low and compact, like United was, they had eight players in the area.

“You are in a great condition to press the ball because you have lots of people close to each other. Since the position of Andreas Pereira, close to the man with the ball, there’s no pressing. Then Matic, no pressing, then movement in the space and nobody goes.

“Yarmolenko is in the box surrounded by centre-backs and nobody even tries to go to block the shot so I think positionally we can say the low block was correct but the idea of the low block was completely wrong.”