A familiar story was told on Saturday afternoon when Manchester United beat Tottenham Hotspur winning 1-0 after Anthony Martial came off the bench. He has now scored four goals as a substitute but has reiterated his desire to start games.
It is important for us because we lost the last game. It was important for us to win and I’m happy I scored. The manager told me to find the space and I know Lukaku is good with his head, so I found the space and I score so I’m happy. I want to play, I don’t want to be on the bench, but Rashford played good too. The manager wants to give us a chance, so we have to score and make assists.
After the game, Jose Mourinho explained his thinking behind using his forward players and has praised them all.
Sometimes he starts the match and his contribution is good but not scoring so many times as he does coming from the bench. But he’s playing well – the same as Rashford, the same as Lukaku. These players work amazingly well. Today we had two strikers playing together against three top central defenders – the best we have in Europe. They had to do the defensive job of pressing them coming out with the ball, which they do really well, because they have big routines of playing with three at the back. And on top of that they gave us solutions to get out of the pressure, to find depth, to win first balls, to press seconds. Then Martial scores with a bad shot, but a bad shot can sometimes be a beautiful one.
