Sir Alex Ferguson was back where he belongs – at Old Trafford – for the first time since recovering from a brain haemorrhage but he witnessed a disappointing draw for a Manchester United team who failed to turn dominance into three points. At the close Wolves came close to stealing victory when David de Gea saved a shot from Adama Traoré with a foot and the winger then blasted wide in added time.
This left José Mourinho again bewailing his players’ mindset, stating those of Wolves possessed a “World Cup final” attitude and his did not.
“They play like I like to play, which is like the World Cup final,” the manager said. “That is the attitude I like my teams to have in every match. We didn’t have that. This is something you learn when you are a kid in the academy. You don’t need experiences at the highest level to learn that. It is a basic law of football.
“I can’t explain the difference of attitude because I never had a difference of attitude. For me it is difficult to explain that.”
“I could say we were tired, Champions League [in mid-week], awful pitch [at Young Boys] – the body suffers the different impact on an artificial rather than actual grass – not coming home after the match. I could go in this direction but Alexis Sánchez and Jesse Lingard didn’t play. [Marouane] Fellaini played 20, 25 minutes, Fred played 60 minutes, [Antonio] Valencia also didn’t play.”
The visitors signalled early on they would push forward when possible, creating two chances for Raúl Jiménez, the attacking spearhead in Nuno Espírito Santo’s 5-4-1 set-up. Both times United were breached along Luke Shaw’s left corridor but Jiménez failed to take full advantage. He miscued the first and De Gea saved smartly from the second.
