Man United captain Rooney dropped by Mourinho

“Obviously we had five minutes of madness in the first half, which knocked us down”.

“Rooney is a big player for me, a big player for United and a big player for his country”.

“Honestly”, Mourinho said, “I think there was a Wayne before the Slovakia-England and a Wayne after Slovakia-England”.

“We were very strong against a team that is very easy to analyse but very hard to cope with”.

Manchester United captain, Wayne Rooney came on in the 83rd minute, as the skipper was dropped to the bench for the first since December 2015.

De Gea clawed another Gray effort away from the top corner before Rooney was given a 10-minute run-out in the closing stages, as United saw out a morale-boosting win that will raise plenty of questions over the future of the captain.

“At that time the match was gone and I preferred to reserve them for the next match on Tuesday against Porto”, he told Sky Sports.

“I don’t know [if it was his best game since returning from Juventus] I think he played okay against Southampton, he played okay against Hull City”, said Mourinho.

On a day of 29 goals in eight games, both Manchester sides were outscored by Liverpool, who crushed Hull City 5-1 to take their tally to 24 in the past eight games. Juan Mata doubled the lead in the 37th minute after which Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford added to Leicester’s woes before the break.

“Today we had intensity movement and dynamism”.

“It was a good performance and result”, Mourinho said. It is very odd because we are so strong on the corners and they scored three times.

The Reds went into the match unbeaten in seven home league games against Leicester, whose only win in their 18 most recent trips to Old Trafford came in January 1998 courtesy of a Tony Cottee victor.

According to Football365, before Saturday’s game, Rooney had taken 16 of United’s 23 corners in the league, and the team hadn’t scored from any of them.

Claudio Ranieri concedes he withdrew Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez at half-time of Leicester City’s Premier League thrashing at Manchester United with one eye on the Champions League. If I don’t play [Marcus] Rashford you ask me why, if I don’t play Jesse Lingard you ask me why and you prefer always to ask why somebody is not playing.

“We started to try to do something but alone, not as a team”.

“Obviously it was a hard first half and to go down the way we did was disappointing”, winger Gray told Foxes Player.