MANCHESTER: Jose Mourinho insisted Manchester United had played their best football of the season and could have put seven goals past lowly Stoke City after their 1-1 draw on Sunday.
Substitute Anthony Martial’s first goal of the season was cancelled out eight minutes from time by Joe Allen following a rare error by David de Gea.
But Mourinho refused to be critical either of the goalkeeper or his forwards, who missed a host of chances.
“It’s simple — that was the best performance of the season” said Mourinho, whose side beat reigning champions Leicester 4-1 the previous weekend.
“Three or four-nil at half-time, six or seven-nil at the end of the game… but the result was 1-1.
“That’s football. That’s very undeserved but, I repeat, that was a much better performance than against Leicester.
“Against Leicester, the result made more than the performance,” the Portuguese manager added. “Today, it was the exact opposite.
“That was our best performance by far. We had six, seven, eight great chances to win the game.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba, on at least two occasions, wasted glorious chances for United while Stoke goalkeeper Lee Grant, on loan from second-tier Derby County and making just his second Premier League appearance at the age of 33, was man of the match.
“In the first minute, their goalkeeper made an unbelievable save,” said Mourinho. “And he kept doing that until the end of the game.
“He started with an amazing save from Zlatan and ended with an amazing save from Zlatan.
