Ralf Rangnick explained why he substituted Mason Greenwood early in the second-half of their 1-0 defeat to Wolves on Monday night.

Manchester United have come under fire for their performance at home that saw Rangnick lose his first game in six as interim manager.

Greenwood was taken off by Rangnick after an hour

Greenwood's substitution was met with a smattering of boos from the United fans

Question marks have been raised about the application of some players, but the decision to take off Greenwood and put on Bruno Fernandes after 60 minutes with the game locked at 0-0 was met with a smattering of boos by the Man United fans.

Rangnick sought to justify his decision when asked about it after the game.

"The question was shall I take off Mason or shall I take off Edi," said Rangnick.

"We decided to keep Edi as the most offensive, the more 'striker' of the two of them and take off Mason.

"It was my call," he asserted. "We could have done it in another way but we chose Mason. We know how the fans like Mason but, until then his effort, and performance was not outstanding but at least he was one of the better players."

Rangnick defended his decision to substitute Greenwood

In a separate interview with Sky Sports, Rangnick added: "It was 0-0 and we had our better moments in that part of the game, so we decided to bring on Bruno. He had a big chance to put us 1-0 ahead.

"Mason was good but I had to take somebody off and I didn't want to take one of the no.6s off [Scott McTominay or Nemanja Matic] so the question was should I take off Edi or Mason, and I decided to take off Mason."

talkSPORT's Manchester reporter Micky Gray says he has never seen a reaction like that from the Old Trafford faithful when Rangnick decided to replace Greenwood.

Gray told talkSPORT Breakfast: "He brought Bruno Fernandes on, who actually played quite well when he came on, but took Mason Greenwood off who was having a decent game.

"They started booing. I've never seen that at Old Trafford before. It was crazy."