Southampton FC v Manchester United - Premier League
#4 Eccentric team selection
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Burnley FC v Manchester United - Premier League
Against Southampton, the Portuguese opted for a back 5, with Matic, Jones and McTominay as the three Center Backs. While the decision to put three centre-backs against a team that has scored just 10 goals in 13 games and is currently 19th in the table is baffling, Mourinho's choice of players makes it hard to back him up. It seems that the manager is hell-bent on showing the upper management that they were wrong to deny him a new centre-back in the summer!
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Mourinho already has Eric Bailly in the ranks and even had Marcos Rojo on the bench. The Ivorian is neither nursing an injury, nor going through a lack of form, he has just irked his manager for reasons unknown. He last played a full 90 minutes in the loss against Brighton and has appeared three times since then, for a total of 21 minutes.
Bailly has not even been on the bench for most of the games and for a player who was brought to United by Mourinho, things have gone haywire in the space of the year. But this is not the first time that Mourinho's team selection has been questionable.
Against Spurs, Herrera was used as a centre-back, a move that backfired. McTominay has been used in that position before already, in the defeat to West Ham. Mourinho has been eccentric in his team selection, and there has been a lack of consistency in his team selection that has hurt United. If such inconsistencies continue, United might be in a bigger mess in the future.
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Deepungsu Pandit
Deepungsu is a veteran football journalist who has been covering daily transfer roundups and news for over six years at Sportskeeda. He has written close to 9000 articles for the website, and has garnered over 19.5Million reads.
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