Mourinho reveals why Sanchez missed United's embarrassing 3-2 defeat to Brighton

Man Utd star Alexis Sanchez missed yesterday's defeat at Brighton through injury

Manchester United attacker Alexis Sanchez missed Manchester United's embarrassing 3-2 defeat against Brighton with an injury, according to Jose Mourinho.

Speaking after Brighton, Mourinho explained the Chilean's absence was due to an unspecified injury he picked up in training admitting that he was unable to put a date on when Sanchez will be back in action for Manchester United.

"I don't know really. Let's wait for the results of the studies. But I don't think it’s a big thing. I think it will be one or two week’s maximum," he said.

A head of the game, Mourinho also explained his decision to start Anthony Martial ahead of Marcus Rashford.

"We know Anthony well and you can always expect good things from him. He can find that stability that makes the right players, we try to help him and he is working well," Mourinho told Sky Sports.

"Alexis was going to play but he had a little problem so we had to decide the opportunity for one attacking player.

"Jesse is the one that is late on his preparation, he had a small injury when he started last week, he was not selected last week.

"Marcus is obviously an important option to play on the left. But we believe that Lukaku can not play 90 minutes.

"So start with one striker and one on the left so the decision was to protect Marcus for that situation to play later and give Martial the opportunity to play."

United return to action next Monday as they welcome Tottenham to Old Trafford.