Thursday, March 22, 2018

Man Utd 1-2



Telegraph:

Man Utd 2 Chelsea 1: Romelu Lukaku and Jesse Lingard score in comeback win to ease pressure on Jose Mourinho


Sam Wallace


Every manager who has ever feuded with Jose Mourinho knows that the time to worry is once he starts making peace with expansive public gestures of friendship, and talking with a laboured sincerity about a mutual responsibility to the game to be respectful.

The bad news for Antonio Conte is that he has already reached this point with Mourinho, his status as chief enemy revoked, his threat level radically downgraded.

This was a strange game, after which even Mourinho admitted that Chelsea had dominated the opening 45 minutes, but by the end of it the problems of the last few weeks looked significantly worse for Conte, and the United manager knew that he has more dangerous rivals than the current champions.

After an afternoon of handshake conventions fulfilled, Mourinho adopted his well-practised rueful peacemaker aspect to announce the end of bad vibes between him and Conte. Mourinho’s players had done well in the second half, most notably the two Chelsea old boys, Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic, the former scoring the first and creating the second for Jesse Lingard. Matic shut the back door on Chelsea – and even when Conte unleashed his full firepower on United it barely made a difference.

It was hard to say how Chelsea lost from having a first-half lead given to them by Willian, showing some of the sparkling form of Tuesday’s draw with Barcelona and well assisted by Eden Hazard.

Scott McTominay will always remember the day he had to mark one of the English game’s finest talents. By and large the young midfielder did a good job. By 75 minutes, Conte judged his No 10 to be exhausted and replaced him with Pedro.


Mourinho said later that it was the technical aspects of his team’s first-half performance that meant they started slowly, some high-level detail about the pressing distances and the shape of his “midfield square”. Once they got that right, he said, it was a different matter. “We can be speaking about tactics and positions and football science but I think to win against the big teams – and it happens when other teams like Newcastle beat us – the attitude has to be really special, and the players showed that.”

Lukaku’s mastery of the ball is often imperfect, but he hung in there and scored a good equaliser before half-time and then clipped in a cross for the substitute Lingard to head in at the near post. There was a first-half moment before the goal when Old Trafford sighed at the ease with which Antonio Rudiger dispossessed the United striker, and yet he turned it around.

The next time United are back at Old Trafford it will be Liverpool, against whom they conceded the initiative of their early-season promise when they played so defensively in the draw at Anfield in October. That will be an even more serious test than Chelsea, who have now lost three of their last four league games and find themselves in fifth and in serious danger, as Conte admitted, of missing out on the Champions League places.

The Chelsea manager had begun the game shaking hands with Mourinho, and there was a moment during the match when the latter seemed to successfully break the chill with a joke. Conte kept the celebrations for Willian’s goal at the lower end of the scale by his standards, although at that point he may have felt he was going to see something different from his team.

“You have to manage the game better and with experience, with maturity, get three points,” he said later. “Instead for another time we are talking about a loss and we must be very disappointed.”
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There was one grievance over an offside decision against Alvaro Morata in the 85th minute when he put the ball in United’s goal from a pass by substitute Cesc Fabregas, for which Conte again demanded the swift introduction of video assistant referees. This one was hard to judge, with many of the United players seeming to have stopped at the first sign of the flag being raised.

Chelsea had counter-attacked beautifully for the goal, Willian winning a header in his own area and bringing the ball clear. He passed it into Hazard and continued his run, anticipating the excellent return pass from his team-mate, who doubled back before releasing. The Brazilian beat David De Gea at his near post, a shot that you could say the United goalkeeper should have dealt with better.

The equaliser arrived seven minutes later when Lukaku, with his back to goal, laid the ball off to Matic, and from there it went to Alexis Sanchez and on to Anthony Martial, who played a short ball into the path of Lukaku as he ran through a crowded area.

On this occasion, his touch did not let him down: there was one with the left foot to control it and the right foot to bury it.

In the second half, Lukaku had already forced an excellent save from Thibaut Courtois with a flying volley from Sanchez’s cross when he delivered a near-post cross for Lingard, who had gone on in place of Martial, to head in. Conte ended the game with Olivier Giroud and Morata in attack and Fabregas on for Danny Drinkwater, but nothing  worked and all that was left for him was another defeat, and Mourinho’s condolences, which must have been a very bitter pill indeed.



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Mail:

Manchester United 2-1 Chelsea: Romelu Lukaku scores one and creates another for Jesse Lingard as Jose Mourinho's men hit back after Willian's opener to beat his former club at Old Trafford


By Ian Ladyman for the Daily Mail


Romelu Lukaku’s performance said everything about him and this Manchester United team. This is what he — and they — can do when the mood takes them. The challenge now is to do it more often.

This was a game that United deserved to win. They deserved it because they responded better than Chelsea to Willian’s opening goal.

They created the better chances in the second half and, for the last hour, were progressive while Chelsea, surprisingly, were not.


Chelsea should and could have taken a draw. Alvaro Morata had a poor afternoon but he had the ball in the net with four minutes to go and was incorrectly ruled offside. So, Antonio Conte and his players left Old Trafford with something to feel genuinely sore about.

But that does not change the fact United were better. After a poor start to the game, they were a little sharper and just a little more cohesive than Chelsea in key areas. Jose Mourinho also made better substitutions than Conte and one of them — Jesse Lingard for Anthony Martial — effectively won him the game.


So this was an afternoon for United to renew faith. Beating the big teams has always been a prerequisite at this club and here was a reminder that Mourinho remains a manager who knows how to do it.

The mystery is why United can’t raise themselves to these levels more often. Too often United — and expensive players such as Lukaku, Paul Pogba and Alexis Sanchez — are too passive in their play. They do not exude the authority that should come with their status, not to mention their ability.

On this occasion, Lukaku was the difference. The Belgian scored one and made one and was dangerous throughout.

Had he been playing for Chelsea, one of his former clubs, the result would probably have been different. Lukaku was clinical while Morata was not.


Chelsea, with Eden Hazard also having a poor game, were blunt when they reached the edge of the penalty area while, at the other end, United grew more dangerous as the afternoon went on.

It looked very different at 1-0 to Chelsea. Conte’s team had started the brighter and Morata volleyed a cross from Marcos Alonso on to the crossbar in only the fourth minute. So when they took the lead after half an hour, it looked as though they would take the game away from United.

It was a brilliantly taken goal from Willian, Chelsea’s player of the moment. The Brazilian with the electric turn of pace picked up the ball in his own half when Pogba inexcusably failed to challenge Victor Moses in the air and passed to Hazard before racing forward. The Belgian’s return pass was superb and far too good for a United defence and midfield which had too many players in the wrong positions.

As Willian headed into the penalty area, the angles seemed to be against him and it looked briefly as though he might feed Morata to his left. Maybe that is what David de Gea thought, too, because the United goalkeeper seemed to be surprised when the shot arrived, with power, at his near post.

It was through him before he could adjust and Chelsea had a 1-0 lead that had been coming.

The following 10 minutes turned out to be the most important of the game. United looked vulnerable and almost immediately there were half-chances for Hazard and Alonso. Neither were taken and, as Chelsea seemed reluctant to land a killer blow, United responded with an equaliser.


Lukaku’s touch fails him at times but it can also be very good. Here, he outmuscled N’Golo Kante on the edge of the penalty area to lay the ball back to Sanchez and, when it came back to him 12 yards out via a nice pass from Martial, he controlled it well and placed his shot past Thibaut Courtois and into the corner.

The 22nd goal of Lukaku’s debut United season, it was his first against a team higher than ninth in the table. That statistic will continue to haunt him until he does this more regularly.

Nevertheless, it gave United a platform and, from that moment on, they had the edge. Sanchez was once again disappointing but the Chilean did provide the cross from which Lukaku swivelled in mid-air to volley towards goal in the second half.

Courtois touched that one over but could do nothing about the key play with 15 minutes left.

Lukaku’s cross from the right should probably have been stopped at source and then the 21-year-old defender Andreas Christensen got caught under the ball as Lingard headed in from eight yards.


It was a poor goal to concede and summed up the way Chelsea’s afternoon had deteriorated.

Christensen, of course, was the player who erred when Lionel Messi equalised in the Champions League at Stamford Bridge last Tuesday.

He should also have been tighter to Lukaku for the first goal, so this is a time to question Conte’s wisdom in picking him ahead of the more experienced Gary Cahill.

But mistakes from a young defender are not why Chelsea lost this game. For once, Mourinho’s United team found a way to impose themselves on an important match and take a result away from a big opponent.

They will have another chance soon enough. They play Liverpool here in a fortnight.


MANCHESTER UNITED (4-2-3-1): De Gea 6; Valencia 6, Smalling 6, Lindelof 6, Young 6; McTominay 6.5, Matic 7.5; Sanchez 6 (Bailly 80mins 6), Pogba 6, Martial 5.5 (Lingard 63mins 8); Lukaku 8.5

Subs not used: Mata, Carrick, Rashford, Shaw, Pereira

GOALS: Lukaku 39, Lingard 75

BOOKED: Matic, Morata

JOSE MOURINHO: 8

CHELSEA (3-4-2-1): Courtois 6; Azpilicueta 6, Christensen 5.5, Rudiger 6; Moses 6 (Giroud 77mins 6), Kante 6, Drinkwater 6 (Fabregas 75mins 6), Alonso 6; Willian 7, Hazard 6 (Pedro 73mins 6); Morata 5.5

Subs not used: Caballero, Zappacota, Cahill, Palmieri

GOALS: Willian 30

BOOKED: Kante

ANTONIO CONTE: 6.5

REFEREE: Martin Atkinson 7.5

MAN OF THE MATCH: Romelu Lukaku

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