Jose hails United

Jose Mourinho insisted Manchester United had played their best football of the season and could have put seven goals past lowly Stoke City after their 1-1 draw on Sunday.

Substitute Anthony Martial's first goal of the season was cancelled out eight minutes from time by Joe Allen following a rare error by David de Gea.

But Mourinho refused to be critical either of the goalkeeper or his forwards, who missed a host of chances.

"It's simple -- that was the best performance of the season" said Mourinho, whose side beat reigning champions Leicester 4-1 the previous weekend.

"Three or four-nil at half-time, six or seven-nil at the end of the game... but the result was 1-1.

"That's football. That's very undeserved but, I repeat, that was a much better performance than against Leicester.

"Against Leicester, the result made more than the performance," the Portu-guese manager added. "Today, it was the exact opposite.

"That was our best performance by far. We had six, seven, eight great chances to win the game."