Manchester United 4-0 Crystal Palace
Seven games and seven goals fro Lukaku who equals Man Utd legend Andy Cole with the same record in the first seven games in the EPL. Arguably the Belgian international has been the best player so far in England.
Mourinho reacts on another clean sheet:
“I’d rather swap one 4-0 win for four 1-0 victories but I know that’s not possible. We are happy, we played solid, we played strong from the beginning, we were in good control. There were some little mistakes, which is typical from some of their players and is typical from playing against a team which is lacking in confidence, which they are.”
“We tried to change some players and we did that with five [changes from the team that won in Moscow] and I think these five make the difference. You could see [Antonio] Valencia, Phil [Jones], [Marouane] Fellaini, [Juan] Mata and [Marcus] Rashford were at a different stage than [Romelu] Lukaku and [Henrikh] Mkhitaryan, which is normal. But the combination worked well, the players coming from the bench also helped and we deserved the victory that we need.”
We always expect a striker to score more goals than the others but especially our attacking players, they have the freedom to play. They can always be in finishing areas, in fact I want them to be, so if people like Lingard, Mata, Mkhitaryan and Martial score goals, I think it’s just a natural consequence of the way we play.
I need good players and good people. I need players with maturity. With the concept of ‘team’. I know the new players are more individuals as the society makes them this way. Valencia, Mata, Matic and others, it’s great to have these players.
It’s just four matches at home [so far this season]. In the same four matches last season we picked up eight points, not 12. We are playing well, not for 90 minutes as sometimes we have periods where we lose our consistency in what I call quality with high intensity, but it is difficult to do that for 90 minutes after a Champions League game. I am happy we start the season very strong, respecting the opponents but not giving them the chance to be stable in the game, so I am very happy with the points.”
