Jose Mourinho reveals delight over Manchester United's 'crucial triangle'

The Red Devils boss made a tactical switch which helped earn a crucial 2-0 win at Burnley
Mourinho's 'crucial triangle' of Lindelof, Fellaini and Smalling in action
Getty Images
Tom Doyle3 September 2018

Jose Mourinho has hailed Manchester United's 'crucial triangle' for helping the Red Devils to overcome Burnley and arrest an alarming dip in form.

United travelled to Turf Moor on Sunday off the back of two Premier League defeats in a row, with a 3-2 loss at Burnley compounded by a 3-0 home hammering from Tottenham.

Mourinho's side were already six points adrift of Liverpool and Chelsea - and even Watford - just three games into the season, with the defence a particular worry after shipping seven goals in 270 minutes.

With Ed Woodward denying Mourinho the top-class centre-back he craved in the summer transfer window, Luke Shaw is perhaps the only United defender to have had a positive start to the new campaign.

In Pictures | Burnley vs Manchester United | 02/09/2018

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With Eric Bailly dropped and both Phil Jones and Marcos Rojo injured, Mourinho started Chris Smalling alongside Victor Lindelof in the heart of defence - but the Portuguese manager had an ace up his sleeve.

Mourinho opted for Marouane Fellaini ahead of Fred in midfield, but the Belgian was deployed in a deeper defensive midfield role to support the central defensive duo in combatting Burnley's long balls.

Burnley created little danger of note as United controlled the game and went two goals up by half-time courtesy of a Romelu Lukaku brace, and held on for the win despite Marcus Rashford's second-half dismissal.

Mourinho was full of praise for Fellaini and his defenders after the game, telling United;s website: "The pace with the ball and the organisation without the ball [was very good].

"Also the tactical approach, the concentration of a crucial triangle - Fellaini, Lindelof and Smalling - the creativity in midfield and then the intensity moving the ball.

"And in the last 10/15 minutes even when we played at less speed and at less intensity for the counter-attack I thought the performance was very good."

The coach was delighted with both his side's tactical discipline as well as their creativity, saying: "The first 10 minutes were the mirror of the game. So fast, so creative, even I can say so beautiful, but we lost three chances in the first 10 minutes and I think that was the mirror of the game.

"We managed to score two goals which was enough to win, but it shouldn’t just be two, it should be three, four, five, six.

"We should have scored before we scored the goals and we should have scored the penalty that would kill the game and also the best chances after the penalty. Even with 10 men, the team was really strong in every aspect of the game.

“They had very few chances because the organisation was really good and we managed to stop their danger for the majority of the time.

"There were good individual performances no doubt about it and without those you cannot win matches. Individual mistakes lose you matches and today we didn’t have those [in defence]. We had some in the face of Joe Hart and that’s why the result was only 2-0."

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