Jose Mourinho has defended Matt Doherty after his competitive debut in Sunday's 1-0 loss to Everton.
The 28-year-old fullback was signed from Wolves this summer, but didn't finish the season with his former club until mid-August.
He was replaced against Everton after 75 minutes by Moussa Sissoko, and Mourinho admitted his players were struggling with a truncated preseason preparation.
"The players who didn't have pre-season, we don't have now the possibility to give them a pre-season but we have a lot of matches now to play consecutively," Mourinho said in his post-match press conference.
"We have to use these matches, not just to win them and the knockout ones are obviously decisive ones with everything decided in 120 minutes or even penalties, and try to use this to improve the form of some players because some of them were really in trouble.
"You can look to Doherty, a player who is normally in incredible condition. He didn't have pre-season. He went direct from holidays to national team matches. No pre-season at all.
"Direct and not one single training session, direct from holidays to national team and he played two consecutive matches and today he was not Matt Doherty like he normally is."
