AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe has shared his thoughts following this evening’s 1-0 loss at Old Trafford.
Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United took the lead on 25 minutes, as a Romelu Lukaku header found the top right-hand corner.
Following the defeat, boss Howe spoke on the following points.
On the performance…
We’re disappointed because we’ve been beaten, but I’m really pleased with the performance. I thought we were very good today and were very disciplined out of possession. We were also very good with the ball and created numerous chances.
We really did establish ourselves in the game very early and there were some really good individual performances today. The team functioned very well.
On the game plan…
We had two distinct ways we wanted to play today. One was to be compact and disciplined without the ball. If you’re too loose against the top teams, they hurt you so I thought we were good in that area. I was pleased with the out lines and our strikers helping out the other units of the team.
With the ball, we wanted to be as brave as we could and try to dominate possession. I wouldn’t say we dominated possession, but when we had the ball I thought we were good and our passages of play were strong.
On United…
They have an outstanding goalkeeper who made a number of good saves and maybe we could have done better in and around their box, but when you consider the opposition and where were playing, I was very pleased with players.
On the final five minutes…
Sometimes you can chase the game too early and there were counter attacks for them, but we controlled that and were disciplined. The substitutions came on and did well and by the end of the game, we were just hoping that something would fall that we could take but unfortunately it didn’t.
Really late on were getting corners and applying pressure and you’re thinking that perhaps one will drop. Afobe and King went together for a header at the back post and Defoe also had a chance.
There were free kicks and corners and shots from around the edge of the box that De Gea did well to save. We did pile the pressure on and I don’t think anyone could have begrudged us from getting something from the game, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
