Following Manchester United’s 1-1 draw with Anderlecht, Jose Mourinho was again critical of the attacking players.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored United’s only from the 15 attempts we had, seven of which were on target. In contrast, Anderlecht’s 86th minute equaliser was their only shot on target.

Mourinho has said that the defenders will be upset with the forwards as they are doing their job, limiting the opposition to just one good chance over 90 minutes, yet the attacking players aren’t doing their’s by finishing the chances created.

The result is positive – to play at home with an advantage, to start the game with an advantage, it is a good result but I think the result should be much better. We can only blame ourselves because we had an easy game to play in the second half and we didn’t play in attack with that instinct. We lost the ball easily too many times, we stopped our counter-attacks because of sloppy decisions, sloppy touches of the ball and then we gave them opportunity to have some counter-attacks. But luckily our defenders were very much in the game and they resolved all of these problems. But if I were a Manchester United defender I would be very upset with the attacking players because they have to kill the game and they didn’t.

Mourinho didn’t stop there, claiming that the attacking players are sloppy and that they make the wrong decisions when in forward positions.

We have to kill matches. We had chances, control, but we don’t score goals; we risk. There was lots of space to kill, good chances. Lots of chances that we don’t get because of a bad touch, sloppy touch, a flick, bad decisions in the last third. There was a team with good organisation at the back, but one mistake and we were punished.

In my poor English I cannot find a better word [than sloppy]. You have to play more seriously. Put the performance of two or three of our attacking players together and you squeeze not much juice out of it. Rashford, Lingard, Ibrahimovic, Martial. They were very similar. But the people behind: very solid, very focused. The defenders did the serious work but the people who had to kill the game didn’t. We start the game at Old Trafford in front, but we had all the conditions to kill the game.

It was a strong performance from the team from a defensive point of view. Lingard, Mkhitaryan, Rashford – they did defensively what we asked them to do, to compact the team, to control direct opponents, to cover some spaces. We were very solid defensively and that is not just about the defenders, it’s about the team as a team. But then when the team is broken, because we go to counter attack, we cannot lose so many balls because it’s not just about the chances we missed because we didn’t miss so many chances, it’s about half-chances. The chances where we feel the space is there, the time is there, the end decision is wrong.