Jose Mourinho acknowledged Brighton deserved more against 'not perfect' Manchester United

Saturday 25 November 2017 19:04, UK

Jose Mourinho believed Brighton deserved more than they got in Manchester United's 1-0 win at Old Trafford.

United were indebted to a heavily fortunate winning goal - credited as a Lewis Dunk own goal - as they scraped past the newly promoted side.

Well-drilled Brighton threatened to cause an upset as they impressed on their first trip to Old Trafford since 1993 but United ground out the result.

It took their run of victories at home against Premier League newcomers to 19 matches, getting an important sequence of games off to a winning start ahead of trips to Watford and Arsenal.

"We played amazingly well in the first-half against Basel and we lost," Mourinho said.

"The most important thing is the points. You want to play well, play perfect but today we weren't perfect and didn't even play very well.

"What Chris [Hughton] and Brighton deserved was more than the result they got. They played really well. They had great defensive organisation with a lot of players in a compact block - that's good defending. When they had the ball they were dangerous on the counter-attack. I thought Brighton were very, very good. Many congratulations to them."

Asked why his team under-performed, Mourinho pointed to the lack of control in midfield due to the amount of attacking players he had on the pitch. For the second league game in a row, he picked Anthony Martial, Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford and also added Zlatan Ibrahimovic to that trio in the second half.

Mourinho said: "Sometimes playing with many attacking players doesn't mean you play offensive. That was what happened today. We had lots of attacking players on the pitch but we lost control in midfield. We had some problems."