EPL: Pogba scores as United thrash Leicester City

Manchester United has got their Premier League campaign back on track with a 4-1 thrashing of Leicester City at Old Trafford on Saturday.
The Red Devils, who had lost their last two top-flight games heading into this one, put their opponents to the sword with four goals in the first half.
Defending champions Leicester did pull one back on a day to forget at the Theatre of Dreams, but United comfortably saw things through to make it back-to-back wins in all competitions after a testing week for Jose Mourinho.
The first half actually got off to a slow start, with neither side attempting a shot on target in the opening 20 minutes of the contest between these two heavyweight teams.
It was United, minus dropped skipper Wayne Rooney, who drew first blood a quarter of the way in when captain for the day Chris Smalling outjumped Robert Huth and got the beating of stand-in keeper Ron-Robert Zieler to head home the opener.
It was a different story the moment Smalling’s goal hit the net, though, as a breathtaking 20-minute spell saw three more goals arrive for Mourinho’s men.
Marcus Rashford and Zlatan Ibrahimovic had both missed good chances to add a second, the latter coming close to scoring a Goal of the Season contender with his half-volley on the swivel, while Paul Pogba’s 30-yard strike was turned aside by Zieler.
United then stepped things up a level, scoring at the end of an 18-pass move when Pogba’s latest scooped pass was flicked into the path of Juan Mata by Jesse Lingard for the Spaniard to blast into the corner.
A short corner led to the third of the match, with Mata driving into the box and blasting across goal for Rashford to continue his impressive scoring run, before another well-worked corner led to Pogba glancing home his first for the Red Devils since returning to the club in the summer.
With the game as good as up by the midway point, Claudio Ranieri – who had not lost any of his most recent four games against Mourinho – took off his two star men as Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez made way.
That decision was perhaps taken with one eye on the Champions League tie with Porto in three days’ time, but despite damage limitation being on the mind Leicester did have a goal back on the hour.
United were not willing to let their opponents back into the game, though, as both Ibrahimovic and Lingard came close to regaining the three-goal margin when sending their shots narrowly off target.
Leicester, meanwhile, are stuck in the bottom half after a third away defeat on the spin – the first time that has happened since December 2014 – and have already equalled their tally of losses from last season’s title-winning campaign.