Manchester United 1 Chelsea 1
Jose Mourinho chucked away a 1-0 lead.
That annoyed me because I\’d backed Chelsea to win.
Louis Van Gaal made some decisions and I love managers who make decisions.
He started Fellaini and told him to man-mark Fabregas.
He started Januzaj on the left and Luke Shaw linked well with the kid.
He put Di Maria on the right, where he was wasted in the first half.
Both teams coped with each other pretty well in open play.
Both goals came from set-pieces.
In 52, Drogba jumped at the near post with the tiny Rafael, glanced a typical header from a Fabregas inswinger, with the ball going in off RVP\’s head on the line.
At that stage I thought Eden Hazard would score another within seconds, and that Schurrle would come on and add pace for 20 minutes at least.
But United kept attacking energetically and it was their best performance since Van Gaal took over.
Bringing on Obi Mikel is always, always, always a terrible idea.
Late on, Martin Tyler said, “Chelsea are so adept at managing these situations.â€
I wanted to hear MartÃn say that but I thought bringing on centreback Zouma for Willian was just time-wasting.
But then Ivanovic got a second yellow, unluckily, when Di Maria ran in front of the Serb so that he might get clipped -and he did.
Gary Neville immediately said Chelsea would miss Ivanovic as a marker when they defended the free-kick and, sure enough, the Di Maria inswinger found its target.
A big Belgian, Courtois, made a save from a header by another big Belgian, Fellaini, but the ball broke towards the left foot of Robin Bang! Persie.
You can guess the rest.
That very late goal in 93+ minutes triggered pandemonium in the Theatre of Dreams.
So Manchester United, looking more like the Red Devils of old, had won a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford.
Their next two games are Man City away and Arsenal away.
Last week Sunderland were hammered 8-0 at Southampton and on Saturday Wes Brown miskicked a ball so badly he passed it to Alexis Sanchez, who dinked his shot over Mannone for 1-0.
Then Mannone miscontrolled a risky backpass to give Sanchez a tap-in.
So Arsenal had a walkover against a comically incompetent Sunderland outfit.
When you\’re not playing well, you need rubbish opponents and Arsenal\’s fixture list has been providing them recently.
27th October 2014