Mourinho bemoans toothless United after Anderlecht draw

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho said his team needs to learn to be more ruthless following yet another missed opportunity for victory, with the English outfit failing to secure a result away from home against Anderlecht in a quarter-final first-leg Europa League tilt.

The Red Devils commanded a 1-0 lead from the 37th minute onward, after Henrikh Mkhitaryan opened the scoring. While a positive result seemed set for Mourinho's side to celebrate, an 86th-minute effort from Leander Dendoncker denied Manchester United all the spoils as the match ended 1-1.

Though Mourinho was pleased to hold an away goal before returning to Old Trafford next week, he was still critical of his player's failure to close out the result, telling reporters afterward his side has to learn to "kill matches."

"We had chances, control, but we don't score goals; we risk," Mourinho said, as quoted by the club's official website. "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."

Mourinho summed up his team's performance as ineffective, pointing that United stopped its counter-attacks because of "sloppy decisions" and "sloppy touches of the ball" - it was a word he later doubled down on upon reflection.

"In my poor English I cannot find a better word (than sloppy)," Mourinho said. "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.

"(Marcus) Rashford, (Jesse) Lingard, (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic, (Anthony) 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.

Mourinho added: "Obviously, this is what happens all season. We have chances but don’t score enough goals."

Manchester United currently sits fifth in the Premier League table, with a joint-league-high 12 draws and only three losses over 30 matches.