José Mourinho attacked the meekness of most of Manchester United’s players as his team fell two goals behind to Southampton before coming back to equalise. The comeback did not go far enough and the manager accepted a 2-2 draw amounted to two more points dropped.

United started sluggishly at St Mary’s and found themselves two down within 20 minutes after excellent strikes by Stuart Armstrong by Cedric Soares. They were in danger of being beaten by a team who have not won at home all season until Marcus Rashford – United’s one “mad dog”, according to Mourinho – inspired a fightback, creating goals for Romelu Lukaku and Ander Herrera before the break.

The second half drifted by, United never looking capable of getting the better of a team who remain in the bottom three. The draw leaves United in eighth place.

“It doesn’t matter about the system. It has to do with the characteristics of the players and we don’t have many, with all the respect, mad dogs – the ones who bite the ball all the time and press all the time. We don’t have many with that spirit,” Mourinho said.

Exempting Rashford from criticism, the manager suggested some of his players may not even be capable of showing such aggressiveness. “If they did not do better than they did, it’s because they could not do it.”

He condemned his midfield by contrasting the qualities that United showed in the brief spell during which they scored their two goals with the rest of their play. “In that period the people with the ball made the right decisions,” he said. “They played one-touch, two-touch football and made the ball arrive quick into the two attacking players ... fundamentally because we didn’t lose the ball easily. We increased the tempo when we made the right decision and played simple.”

It was hard not to suspect the manager was referring to Paul Pogba, in particular, when he denounced the tendency of certain midfielders to dally on the ball, with the effect they either lost it or slowed United’s progress.

“Somebody said many years ago that simplicity is genius. I agree totally with that old manager who had that brilliant phrase. In some areas of the pitch simplicity is genius. In the second half we wanted to win – the players showed that desire, I’m not saying they didn’t want it – but we needed better decisions. We needed to move the ball faster.

“Southampton were playing for a point in the second half. But even the little chances they created was because we lost the ball. So we didn’t have continuity in our attacking waves. We had one isolated and then for five, 10, 15 minutes we couldn’t connect with the strikers. That continuity comes when you have fluid football, simple football in midfield.”

When it was put to Mourinho that Lukaku looked out of sorts, despite scoring after 12 games without a goal, the manager replied: “So write that. Don’t ask me.”

He also said the decision to substitute Rashford in the 77th minute, which was booed by travelling fans, was taken by the player. “He asked to come off; he was injured,” Mourinho said. “One kick here, one foul there, lots of running and movement and he was done.”

Southampton fans applauded their team’s performance, which relieved the pressure on Mark Hughes.

“I’ll deal with [the pressure]. It’s not a problem. You can see by the manner of the performance that everybody is fully engaged,” the Southampton manager said. “There are a lot of clubs in or around us that are maybe underachieving and the perception is we should be doing better. Is that realistic? I don’t know because we were 17th last season.

“We all feel we’re playing better now but we can’t change overnight to be a top-six club like we have been in the past.”