Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho admits Manchester City were superior in the first half of today's derby.
The Citizens dominated in the early stages of the game but Zlatan Ibrahimovic's goal gave hope to the Red Devils.
The second half saw Mourinho's men fight until the very end but they failed to restore parity as they suffered their first English Premier League defeat of the season.
"What did I make of today? I think in the first half they were much better than us," Mourinho admitted.
"We started the game badly.
"We started the game with some players really below the normal level, in terms of their concentration, of their mental ability to play a game of this speed because you need to be sharp in the way you think, the way you play.
"In a match of this dimension, when you have three or four players not at that level, you pay for that. The team paid for it."
"In the first half, for 35 minutes it was City in control, City deserved to be in front. In the last period of the first half we scored a goal and we could immediately score again but I think that was outside the context of the game in the first half.
"The second half was completely different, and when they brought on Fernando, they were feeling what everybody was feeling, that we were in control. We were much more dangerous, we had our chances to equalise and who knows what could happen if we had equalised.
"For 45 minutes, we fought really hard. We tried everything, took lots of risks and deserved a different result."
