Jose Mourinho will be a relieved man after his Manchester United team got through their Europa League tie in Russia unscathed.The Red Devils secured a 1-1 draw against Rostov and none of his players got injured. On a pitch that was, quite frankly, awful, that’s as good as he could have hoped for.Owen Hargreaves, on co-commentary duty for BT Sport, noted about the pitch: “It’s ridiculous how poor it is,” and the reason why Mourinho wanted the game to be called off quickly became clear.The Portuguese admitted before the game that he was unsure if Henrikh Mkhitaryan would play on a surface that would only increase the risk of him hurting the hamstring injury that has kept him out for two weeks.But not only did the Armenian manage to play for 67 minutes, he also scored the away goal that should ensure United’s progression to the quarter-finals.Mkhitaryan admitted the pitch was “awful” afterwards.“Hopefully I’ve got no injuries so we will keep fighting and get ready for the next game," he told BT Sport, via the Manchester Evening News."We’ve tried to win today, maybe we were not very focused at the start of the second-half we’ve played as good as we could on this pitch so I don’t want to even speak about the pitch because for both sides the pitch was an awful thing but for part of football it was not a very interesting game but we tried to do everything.”

Something else pleased Mourinho

Mkhitaryan’s away goal was vital. But it wasn’t the only thing that pleased Mourinho.

Rostov will be without one of their most important players, right-back Timofey Kalachev, for next week’s return leg after he received a yellow card in the second half.

And Mourinho approached Kalachev at full-time to let him know that he was hoping he would get suspended all along.

Rub salt into his wounds why don’t you Jose?!

It reminds us of the time Sky Sports reporter Geoff Shreeves broke Branislav Ivanovic’s heart by telling him he would miss the 2012 Champions League final for Chelsea.

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