SOME of the fortunate Manchester United fans with one of the 5,600 tickets for Chelsea away in the FA Cup 5th round on Monday received a message from their club on Friday.
“Please be advised that there may be an issue with your Chelsea FA Cup match ticket (it may have the wrong age category stated). We are currently in discussions with Chelsea to resolve this issue and will be in touch ASAP to confirm further details.”
Fans will be let in with their tickets regardless, not just the OAPs among them, but while Chelsea have made an error and marked adult tickets as ‘OAP’, they may have a point: United have been so bad at Stamford Bridge that that visiting fans have been prematurely aged just by watching their team fail season after season.
Not long to wait now! @ToniRuediger found the back of the net when Man Utd last visited the Bridge! pic.twitter.com/vnirc80ujb
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) February 16, 2019
In the last 20 seasons, United have won only three league games at Stamford Bridge, drawing 7 and losing 10. There has been only one win in the last 16 – and that was against nine men. United’s record is rotten there, though the team came within a minute of an unlikely victory in October’s league game. Ross Barkley’s 96th-minute equaliser stopped that most improbable of results.
Chelsea away on Monday night is another huge game for United. Win the FA Cup and whatever else happens, this season which started so badly won’t be regarded as a failure. Win it this year and United can rightly say they will have done it the hard way by knocking out Arsenal away and then holders Chelsea.
That’s holders Chelsea who won it at United’s expense last May when Mourinho’s men didn’t turn up at Wembley. We can blame Mourinho and he can blame Romelu Lukaku (who was fuming for months after since he felt ready to play), but there’s nothing new here. United were dreadful against Chelsea on the previous occasion when they met in an FA Cup final, 2007.
The FA Cup has been fun so far. Arsenal away in the fourth round was the highlight of this season for many: United scored three times, the 5,200 away fans (it should’ve been 9,000) didn’t stop singing…but the reward was the worst draw United could have hoped for. Manchester City and Liverpool are better than Chelsea, but United’s record at the Bridge is worse than that of any other venue.
Chelsea will become the first team to beat Man Utd in 5 consecutive FA Cup meetings, if they win on Monday. Since losing the 2007 FA Cup final, we’ve lost in 2013, 2017 and the final again in 2018. We really do have a poor record against Chelsea, going back a number of years now!
— Karan Patel (@karanmufc87) February 16, 2019
Unlike Arsenal, Chelsea are usually fine when it comes to giving away teams the correct allocation, even if they are anticipating 5,600 OAPs. They’re also fine in beating United at home as they did in 2017 – and that was the end of United’s reign as FA Cup holders.
That night, Mourinho felt he had it right tactically until Ander Herrera was sent off. Chelsea won 1-0 and there were times when their dominance was so acute that the 6,000 United fans at the opposite end didn’t come close to seeing the ball, but it was still only 1-0. A vengeful Herrera was United’s man of the match when the teams next met in a league game at Old Trafford. But games at home are not the problem.
There are reasons for United to be positive which extend beyond their form under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Chelsea are out of kilter and Maurizio Sarri’s team, who won the first five league games of the season to go top, have lost three of their last four. They’ve also been well beaten 2-0 at Arsenal, 4-0 at Bournemouth and 6-0 at Manchester City.
I was at the Etihad in a working capacity last Sunday and some Chelsea fans had enough with two-thirds of the game to play when their team were 4-0 down. They cut their losses and left their seats.
1.2% of the goals Chelsea have ever conceded in the PL have come in their last three away games
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) February 10, 2019
Conceding six will dint their confidence, yet all those three defeats came away from home. Chelsea’s home form remains excellent, with only one defeat in 13 league games. In home cup matches this season, Chelsea have played eight and won eight. With their league form fading so much, they need a cup win to save their season.
When Solskjaer took over on December 19th, Chelsea were fourth and 11 points clear of United, with a goal difference 21 better than United’s zero. Chelsea are now sixth and a point behind United with an inferior goal difference. United have Manchester City to thank for helping out there.
The so far bold Norwegian is not going to go there and try and hold out for a draw, but he’s been stung by injuries to Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard, both of whom left halfway though Tuesday’s defeat to Paris Saint-Germain.
BREAKING: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer confirms that Anthony Martial and Jesse Lingard will be out for “two to three weeks” with injury pic.twitter.com/HYWkCbleKu
— B/R Football (@brfootball) February 15, 2019
They’ll be out for three weeks and with a game against Liverpool to follow the Chelsea match, the timing isn’t ideal. Martial scored both goals at Stamford Bridge in October.
Their absence should offer Alexis Sanchez a chance to step up and finally prove himself as a top player for United, but he’s had numerous such chances and he’s failed thus far. Seldom has a player disappointed as much as the Chilean and it’s baffling why he’s so bad given how hard he trains. He surely can’t be finished as a top-flight player at 30, but he did nothing when he came on against the French champions
United were outclassed on the pitch by Paris in the second half. That deflated the mood a little as any likely European exit would for any club, but it also brought a dose of reality for it showed the standard the best teams need to reach.
United fans were outclassed off the pitch in the stands too by the noisiest set of visitors to come to Old Trafford since the last French fans came two years ago from St Etienne. A repeat of either can’t be allowed to happen against Chelsea.
