Jose Mourinho has revealed that he withdrew Zlatan Ibrahimovic midway through Manchester United's meeting with Burnley due to tactical reasons.
The Swedish striker lasted just 45 minutes on his first Premier League start of the campaign, having failed to make any real impact in the first half.
United were two down at the time but, with Jesse Lingard and Henrikh Mkhitaryan taking over from Marcos Rojo and Ibrahimovic, they went on to earn a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford.
Mourinho has explained that the double change was purely down to his side requiring a rejig for the second half, as he adopted a more attacking lineup.
"It was tactical, play only with one central defender. We know that they don't normally have the ball, they just play direct," he told reporters.
"So really in the lineup, play one against one, [Phil] Jones was a risk Jones accepted, [Nemanja] Matic was there just to bring the ball from totally free positions, so he was bringing lots of balls into midfield.
"And then instead of more positional players like Zlatan and [Romelu] Lukaku, we decided to go with Mkhitaryan, Lingard and [Juan] Mata all three trying to play in these areas behind Lukaku and we can say we had some success.
"I still think with so many balls in important areas, lots of crosses, good crosses, low crosses, we didn't attack all these balls well, and also not lucky with the rebounds, so I'm happy with the effort, the personality, the feeling of we didn't lose but of course we lost two points."
United have scored nine goals via substitutes in the Premier League this season - more than any other side in the competition.
Daniel Lewis
