Jose Mourinho has explained his team selection for the FA Cup third-round replay against Middlesbrough, with five changes from the side that lost to Liverpool in the Premier League at the weekend.
Son Heung-Min was among the big names to drop to the bench, with Mourinho shuffling his deck ahead of two Premier League fixtures in the next week.
As he explained, further rotation was limited due to the club's injury problems but he is optimistic that his squad will be boosted by their returns imminently.
“These are the players that you have. We take the competition very seriously, we took the first match at Middlesbrough seriously and it was difficult, so we can imagine tonight is going to be difficult,” he told BBC Sport.“
We are not in the condition where we can make more rotations than what we have done. We changed five players, we gave a total rest to Toby Alderweireld because in central defence we are in a position to do that.
“Apart from that, we have to try with what we have to get through these difficult moments and we will recover some players from injury, I believe that next week, one or another will be back and we will be back to normality.”
