Manchester United cruised to a 2-1 win over Leicester City on Friday in the 2018/2019 English Premier League season's inaugural game. Goals by Paul Pogba and Luke Shaw set the Red Devils on course to victory although Jamie Vardy pulled one back for the visitors.
In retrospect, the Old Trafford outfit, bar the goals, showed very little urgency going forward in the game and were subtly criticized for playing too deep in their half despite having creative players in Alexis Sanchez, Paul Pogba, Andreas Pereira, Juan Mata and Fred. Manager of the club Jose Mourinho admitted seeing his side's attacking inadequacy at a point in the game and blamed the happening on fatigue.
He, however, disclosed that he wanted to fix this with the introduction of Anthony Martial albeit a reported rift existing between them but blamed his inability to do so on the number of substitutions allowed in a game.
"I needed six changes, not three, three weren't enough for me," Mourinho was quoted to have said by The Republik of Mancunia.
"I want to play Martial for Mata or Alexis but I couldn't. Paul Pogba couldn't play 90 minutes, Fred the same. I needed more changes, but I couldn't so it was not easy to manage the game from the touchline point of view.
"I feel I wanted more attack and I feel that Martial coming into the game in the last 20 minutes for Alexis could have given us the second goal to kill the game.
"But I couldn't make that change, so it was really hard. But the players gave everything, they gave what they had. I told them to give everything they had. You have 10 minutes; you give 10 minutes.
"Marouane told me he couldn't give me more than 10 minutes, okay but give me 10 minutes. Everybody did that in a fantastic way."
