José Mourinho has confirmed Marcus Rashford will make his first club start of the season at Feyenoord in the Europa League on Thursday after giving another glimpse of what the Manchester United manager described as the 18-year-old’s “brilliant future” in the second half of Saturday’s derby defeat at Old Trafford.

“For me the next big game is against Feyenoord and the next game [Rashford] is going to play. That is the only thing I can say,” Mourinho said, coming close, but not that close to admitting he may have erred with his starting lineup in the 2-1 defeat by Manchester City.

“I trust him completely. I know his future will be absolutely brilliant. He is mainly a No9 – if you want to play him in different positions, we need to work him, we need to improve him, but his big personality is there. Normally, people look to the football talent but personality at his level is very important and he was showing that last season – he was showing that immediately.”

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been prolific if a little stodgy in his movement so far and Mourinho suggested he may even choose to play both strikers through the centre in future. “Wide man or we play with both, which we can do perfectly like we did against Hull. I felt City had the fragility on the sides and the kid could give us in the second half on the sides what we didn’t get with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jesse Lingard in the first half.

“Rashford did that for us and because we were playing with Ander Herrera behind Marouane Fellaini and Paul Pogba, I knew that Fellaini and Pogba were going to be in the box all the time so I thought the game was going to be very direct like it was. So I think we read the game really well. The kid gave us what we had needed in the first half.”