Manchester United’s troubled start to the English Premier League (EPL) season took another unexpected twist as they lost limply 3-2 at Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday.

Woeful defending led to two Brighton goals in two first-half minutes as Glenn Murray and Shane Duffy outsmarted United’s 117 million pound back four to demonstrate why manager Jose Mourinho had sought to upgrade it.

Eric Bailly was particularly exposed and, having conceded a needless corner that led to Duffy’s first Premier League goal, he blundered into foul Pascal Gross, who put away the penalty via David de Gea’s leg on the stroke of halftime.

Although Romelu Lukaku had earlier reduced the deficit with a trademark header, United looked ill-equipped to mount a comeback and Paul Pogba’s injury-time penalty, after Marouane Fellaini was brought down, made the scoreline closer than the match.

In his post-match reaction, Mourinho noted his team made too many errors which cost them the game.

“Too many mistakes. We were punished by the mistakes. Sometimes you make mistakes and are not punished but we were punished for every mistake we made. The third goal was too hard.

“An accumulation of mistakes and punishments with goals was giving happiness and confidence to Brighton.

“I was not expecting big mistakes. We are not speaking about small mistakes. We were punished by this. When you lose your confidence then it’s the normal tendency to lose that confidence and game plan.

“When we scored the first goal I thought we can win this game then the third goal comes in this incredible way.

“Then you try to believe the second goal could give us a chance to go for it, but it was too late,” he said. (Reuters/NAN)

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