Mourinho's sub snub: United boss explains why he hauled off Juan Mata

The new United manager took Mata off in the dying moments of the 2-1 win over Leicester City, which gave Mourinho his first silverware - of sorts, anyway - since winning the league with Chelsea in 2015.

Mata had been brought on during the second half for United's opening goalscorer Jesse Lingard, only to be brought off as Henrikh Mkhitaryan made an appearance at Wembley.

Subbing off a sub is often seen as the ultimate insult for a player, and given the manner in which Mata was first ignored and then offloaded by Mourinho while the pair were both at Chelsea, it certainly seemed like a politically-loaded action.

Indeed, some observers suggested that the decision even sparked a confrontation between player and manager - though having reviewed the footage, it's hard to see what the fuss was about.

In any case, Mourinho explained his decision after the match: with Leicester's aerial bombardment, he decided that he needed as many tall players as possible to defend.

"I needed to take the smallest player off. Because I knew they were going to play big," said Mourinho.

"So I can't remove the tall ones."

The warm greetings between Mourinho and Mata at the final whistle suggested that there was indeed no bad feeling.

The Portuguese manager went on to dedicate the win to the players left on the bench, and also to Louis van Gaal.

"I want to dedicate this victory to those who weren't selected and the person who allowed us to be here today Van Gaal," he said.

"I play this match because Mr van Gaal won the FA Cup so congratulations to him because he’s part of this."

It was a nice touch, and perhaps one designed to build bridges between Mourinho and his former mentor after his rather surprising pre-match comments suggesting that he needed to de-program his players from bad habits that they'd fallen into under the previous boss.

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Mourinho also praised new signing Eric Bailly - who was Eurosport's man of the match - and forgave Marouane Fellaini for the blunder which led to the Leicester goal.

"It's the mistake of the slow pitch," he said.

"Before the game starts I put my hand on the surface and I thought, 'Wow, we are in trouble because we want a fast pitch and the pitch is really slow'.

"So Marouane gives a backpass and the ball slowed down and Vardy smells everything and is really fast."