[amolbhatia50k]

I think the lesson from that match is that despite recent results, we have to focus on building a strong system that ensues despite personnel changes. Of course, every team's performance suffer when you rest first choice players however, the best teams suffer less and maintain their identity and quality in terms of methodology. Essentially, United should be remain United just a 'lite' version should be ring the changes. As opposed to things falling apart when you rest players and collapsing into cluelessness, or everything looking spankingly good when one Fernandes is added to the mix. The more reliant you are on individual brilliance, the less brilliant the collective is.

This has to be part of making progress and judging how much of it has been made.

 

[Strelok]

Tbh I don't blame Ole or anyone but DDG for this match. Ole wanted to win a cup, I'm fine with that. Despite I wanted him to rest the players for the top 4 fight. The players looked knackered, lot of bad passes but they did fight.

The initial plan was okay. We wanted to sit a bit deep and counter. Both teams didn't do anything noticeable until the first goal. And the second goal just killed any hope. No team could play counter attacking if their keeper let in goals like that. And it's not like we're much more stronger to be able to dominate them and win back after 2-0. Chelsea is not Bournemouth anyway.

 

[Croftona7]

my god these just keep popping up

What's your problem with my comment?

 

[Nicoseth]

Never fun to lose but honestly if we win the next 2 games I won't even remember this one. Onward and upward. We'll win on Wednesday.

 

[dal]

The injury cost us, I’m not really bothered about the fa cup anyway, most of these players have already won it, meh.

I do understand why Bruno played and didn’t come off, as you don’t want to send the wrong signal when losing, fine.

Pogba, Rashford, Martial should be fresh for the next one, Leicester have seven days rest, a tough draw will do there ...gung hi for west ham.

 

[MetoTTT]

Gutted we're out and the way it happened yesterday The EL was the less important thing imo. So it was FA + Top 4 priority.

It was a great opportunity to go to the final and win a title. It could have given confidence to our players for next season. It was bizzare, we didn't really give up on the game by resting important players, we didn't really play it fully either.
Unreadable.

 

[freddie the red]

I won't comment on selection or performances but I will say this....
I screamed at the tv when Southampton equalised but just sat there silently during that yesterday.
Maybe it shows exactly where my/our priorities are?
If we weren't destined to win the cup then I'd rather be out now than have yet another game in the final and lose that.
With Leicester's loss to Spurs we now have great chance for the top four.
We also now don't have a game on the 1st August and we can play 2nd strings all over the park against LASK in the EL 2nd leg on the 5th before the competition proper starts in Germany.
2 big games now to qualify for next year's CL then a 2 weeks R & R to prepare for an assault on the Europa League Cup.

 

[Nou_Camp99]

What I can't understand is why couldn't we have played the semi finals and final the week after the season ended? Semi finals could have been played Wednesday at any 2 PL stadiums with the final at Wembley on the 1st as it is now.

The PL scheduling gave Chelsea a huge advantage for this game. Absolute disgrace if I'm honest. If we'd have had 4 days rest like they did we'd have had a better starting line up for sure.

They deserved the win but I never fancied us for the reason above. It simply wasn't fair on us. Ah well...... Must get top 4 now or things will be a disaster for Ole.

 

[theklr]

It really could be something in what OGS said post-match, that the players were abit shocked by Bailly's injury and lost focus. Not fun seeing a teammate having that kind of blow and requiring much medical attention.

 

[mitchmouse]

It really could be something in what OGS said post-match, that the players were abit shocked by Bailly's injury and lost focus. Not fun seeing a teammate having that kind of blow and requiring much medical attention.

Remember the horrific injury to the coventry player Buust in 1996? Schmikes was right next to him and looked really shocked. then played on and we won. Sorry but we were already playing awfully when Bailly was hurt. We never turned up

 

[Skåre Willoch]

Horrible performance by the entire defense and De Gea. Horrible performance by the ref and VAR.

Forget about this one.

On to West Ham.

 

[theklr]

What's your problem with my comment?

Wednesday could be, if we can play like we've seen in recent weeks rather than today, we could get 2 or 3 goals and with Leicester shipping 3 against Spurs today it'll mean Leicester need to beat us by 3 or by 4 to finish above us. I can't see either of those margins occurring.

It doesnt work like that, if we get 3 goals against WH Leicester need 2 goals to go ahead of us.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Tbh I don't blame Ole or anyone but DDG for this match. Ole wanted to win a cup, I'm fine with that. Despite I wanted him to rest the players for the top 4 fight. The players looked knackered, lot of bad passes but they did fight.

The initial plan was okay. We wanted to sit a bit deep and counter. Both teams didn't do anything noticeable until the first goal. And the second goal just killed any hope. No team could play counter attacking if their keeper let in goals like that. And it's not like we're much more stronger to be able to dominate them and win back after 2-0. Chelsea is not Bournemouth anyway.

This, not sure why people were moaning about the system as it only went to pot when we went back to normal.

 

[Ibi Dreams]

Remember the horrific injury to the coventry player Buust in 1996? Schmikes was right next to him and looked really shocked. then played on and we won. Sorry but we were already playing awfully when Bailly was hurt. We never turned up

So because it happened once in the past, that should always be what happens?

It's completely possible that the team lost their concentration a bit during the 10 minutes that Bailly was down getting packed into a stretcher and wearing an oxygen mask. Sure, we weren't good before that but we had gone 40 minutes without Chelsea really creating any chances

 

[mitchmouse]

Back to the way we played vs Palace at home, Newcastle away and Bournemouth away etc. Never turned up, hardly looked interested and no pace or passion. Ole got the line-up wrong and the tactics equally wrong. Haven't fooled Lampard three times, did he think the guy wouldn't have been ready this time? Inexperience and naivety showing again. Of course DDG didn't help him but lots of people here have been warning about the keeper's showings recently and it's fine to back a player but you have to be stronger. Look at SAF and Jim Leighton in the 1990 final...

It also shows that if a team keeps Bruno quiet, we offer almost nothing. Pogba looked ridiculous when he came on andI still wouldn't care if he was sold and we got a good replacement. I know we must be tired and i was a disgrace that Chelsea got more rest between games, in addition the ref was poor but we are so far behind the top two that one or two players may not be enough in the summer.

I feel sorry for Bailly, he rally is unlucky. As for the other CBs, I thought Maguire was worse than Lindelof (and you'd think he'd learnt to head the ball at our corners). AWB was poor too and Williams not much better. This game shows one again that squad strength at United is a myth

I've said before Rashford isn't a lone striker and have no idea why Ole thinks he is. If we were going with just one up top, it should be a big, strong man who can hold up play ie Oggy.

So much was so wrong and it was easy to predict

 

[mitchmouse]

So because it happened once in the past, that should always be what happens?

It's completely possible that the team lost their concentration a bit during the 10 minutes that Bailly was down getting packed into a stretcher and wearing an oxygen mask. Sure, we weren't good before that but we had gone 40 minutes without Chelsea really creating any chances

and during which, we had one touch in their penalty area... one

 

[dalriada]

Something I did not get was that even if we rotated players why did we not do it with any sense whatsoever.

Fred and Mctominay compliment each other very well and midfield and could easily have played together, so why bother with matic.

Also, why not start Ighalo, rashford and James on their natural positions. It could have provided much better balance to the attack, instead of James as a second striker, which was not going to work in a million years.

The selection in defence was still fine but when there, we could have gone regular 4 at the back with TFM and Eric.

The selection was a bit weird for sure

McNulty on the BBC points out that Ole redeployed his system against them from February, when we won 2-0 at the Bridge, and Bailly was their MOTM, this time with Lindelof for Shaw in a back three and Rashford (who was injured then) for Martial. McNulty says if that was the reasoning, it was naive, and I would have to agree - Chelsea's situation was different then, plus the wear and tear on some players since the restart. But it does look like a copy and paste job almost from that match.

 

[Craig Ward]

I’m not as fussed as I should be. No fans. Would prefer to win our first trophy under Solskjaer with fans there

What a terrible outlook. Fan or no fans, that was a chance to get to an FA Cup Final where a below par Arsenal team waits. Perfect chance to win a big trophy and build a winning mentality.

Don't care about the result. But I do care about the next two games. Hope Ole has not fecked things.

Dont care about winning trophies? Again, another disgraceful outlook from a fan. How our fans dont want to win things really irks me.

 

[Ruufio]

Excuse me for butting in on a rival fans forum. But, I'd just like to give an alternative view to some of the grievances I've read on here.
I keep reading that how dirty Chelsea were and how Dean should have at least booked a couple of Chelsea players. From my POV Uniteds players seems to have been instructed to go over if they felt the tiniest bit of contact. That was evident when Kova supposedly "hacked" Fernandes down in the box, when it turned out that Fernandes went down "outside" the box with the tiniest bit of contact, or "dived". And the fact that this happened on more than one occasion means that Dean was being duped over and over again.
And on the issue of yellow cards, how Maguire finished that game without a booking, especially after wrestling Giroud to the ground, followed by him kicking the ball away, I'll never know.
On the issue of rest. Since the restart, your team has constantly had at least an extra days rest between games compared to Chelsea. Is this fair? Or does it only matter when it's United that's affected?
Again, I'm not here to start an argument but, just giving another POV for you to ponder.

 

[Craig Ward]

A very bad night for all concerned, certainly one to learn from rather than to forget.

Missed a massive chance at a trophy.

Chelsea have been inconsistent of late and are very beatable. To get hammered by them can only be described as an embarrassment.

Ole's and the coaches job is to pick the best team available to beat the opposition. I'm a massive fan of Ole and what he is doing but tonight his formation/tactics didnt work. Thats the way it goes, sometimes it works and its genius, other times it bombs and costs us.

We have played that formation before and it can work, you have to trust that based on player fatigue/etc Ole picked the formation/players he thought would help us.

That being said, what you absolutely cannot account for is individual mistakes.

Now i'm not just going to bash DDG, but he should save all 3 easily. We gifted them 3 goals. But what basically all our players done all game was well below par. No one could string a pass, no one looked bothered, no one was running the channels, no one was putting any effort in whatsoever.

DDG didnt cost us that game, we were collectively not at the races. We didnt show up. Chelsea wanted it more, ran harder, pressed us better and totally outplayed us.

The lack of intensity in our play just wasnt there. Even when we brought Martial/Pogba on they didnt impact the game.

A bad day at the office for everyone.

We need to dust ourselves off and bounce back to a bit of form. Big game against West Ham.

Top 4 is in our hands and we still got Europa. Time to show some character

 

[LawCharltonBest]

What a terrible outlook. Fan or no fans, that was a chance to get to an FA Cup Final where a below par Arsenal team waits. Perfect chance to win a big trophy and build a winning mentality.

Yeah, I quite agree. And I never said I didn't want us to win. I really did. It frustrates me that we didn't.

I'm simply not as fussed as I would have been if there was an atmosphere and fans would be there for the final. These trophy presentations in front of empty stadiums strike me as a little sad, forced and half hearted. I will want us to win it twice as much next season when the fans are there.

For this season I want us to win the Europa League too, but i'll be content with getting 3rd and then building towards next season when some fans are back, hopefully as title challengers.

 

[Mihai]

Wednesday could be, if we can play like we've seen in recent weeks rather than today, we could get 2 or 3 goals and with Leicester shipping 3 against Spurs today it'll mean Leicester need to beat us by 3 or by 4 to finish above us. I can't see either of those margins occurring.

Even if we win against West Ham, it all depends on the game against Leicester (plus your math is a bit wrong when calculating the gd). On the other side, even if we lose against West Ham, we can get 4th with a win against Leicester. And the score doesn't even matter. We could lose 0-10 against WH and win 1-0 on the last day.

 

[PieCrust]

Shouldn't have changed the system. Big mistake from Ole. I don't mind the team selection all that much, but should have kept the same approach. Instead we just got dominated from the opening kick off. De Gea's mistakes are tough to stomach, but United never even looked threatening at all.

Would have liked to win this, but oh well. I'm not too bothered about it in the end.

 

[YAMS49]

Wednesday could be, if we can play like we've seen in recent weeks rather than today, we could get 2 or 3 goals and with Leicester shipping 3 against Spurs today it'll mean Leicester need to beat us by 3 or by 4 to finish above us. I can't see either of those margins occurring.

Try again on the goal difference calculation.

 

[TrustInJanuzaj]

If someone said to me yesterday that you could have Utd beating Chelsea while Leicester win or Utd lose and Leicester lose 3-0 to Spurs I’d have chosen that every single time. The reality is, while the FA cup is a nice bonus, it wasn’t the main priority for me and isn’t really that much of an indicator of anything we didn’t already know, (I.e the squad is weak).

Personally I would love to solidify 3rd/4th and then have a real go at the Europa League which does seem winnable. That would be a better season than the Fa Cup

 

[gorky_utd]

It is a trophy but not a big one. Lvg won this trophy and got sacked. For me the bigger worry is fatigue for last two games. As for performance, two gk errors and one own goal gifted it to them. The team looked tired. Hopefully our players recover physically and get back to winning ways for next two games.

 

[Che Guevara]

Man Utd shd have cashed in on De Gea when he was very popular across Europe and in huge demand. The rate he is going right now, l see him condemned to the bench very soon and not worth much on the market. And he is on massive wages too.

 

[Strelok]

Shouldn't have changed the system. Big mistake from Ole. I don't mind the team selection all that much, but should have kept the same approach. Instead we just got dominated from the opening kick off. De Gea's mistakes are tough to stomach, but United never even looked threatening at all.

Would have liked to win this, but oh well. I'm not too bothered about it in the end.

Imo the change of system was the right thing to do.

Our recent system is aimed to dominate and break low block. To dominate you'd need to have a much stronger midfield than your opposition does. Our trio midfield is not much better than Chelsea imo. If they're.

Plus the fatigue and squad rotation required, imo the system change was a logical and right thing to do, given the circumstances. It'd be pretty crazy to think we could dominate Chelsea like we did with the likes of Bournemouth, Sheffield, Villa. Even Sou gave us a very hard time. Especially considering our accumulate fatigue, the fact they should be and were much fresher and the rotation required for the match against West Ham.

 

[RedAlways78]

I know people are just saying don’t care about FA Cup and focus on top 4. Yes I agree to some extent but having some silverware this season would have been nice.
Also DDG, I’m lost for words. Give him a rest for several matches and see how we get on.

 

[TheLord]

The biggest concern I have here is team selection. We really should have rested more first team players and given us more rest before West Ham (which is the bigger game obviously). That would have meant that Romero played here and the likes of Bruno got a much needed rest.

Yes, it was a confused selection.

If Ole picked either the "best eleven" or the "B team", I would have no problems with his selection. A half-hearted United team selection and a half-hearted approach to the game would never beat a fully rested Chelsea's first choice team. The end result was terrible - dumped out of the semifinals, key players will be even more exhausted for the next match (notably Bruno), and on top of that, there was an unfortunate injury.

The approach against Chelsea should have been straightforward - either play your best side to win the Cup and keep the winning momentum going, or rest most of the first-team players for the remaining PL fixtures. Lampard was clear in his approach and won, Ole was indecisive and lost. It will be tragic if it spills over to the PL matches.

 

[Fussball13251]

Probably should have given Mctominay a runaround this game.

 

[red4ever 79]

The injury cost us, I’m not really bothered about the fa cup anyway, most of these players have already won it, meh.

I do understand why Bruno played and didn’t come off, as you don’t want to send the wrong signal when losing, fine.

Pogba, Rashford, Martial should be fresh for the next one, Leicester have seven days rest, a tough draw will do there ...gung hi for west ham.

Who in our team has won the FA Cup?

 

[Ibrahimorich]

Terrible selection, Ole pretty much threw the game with that lineup so we know he didn't want to win the FA Cup!

DDG awful. Imagine how Romero feels right now. He's been brilliant in the cups and DDG comes in and fecks it up immediately. Just play Romero the rest of the season. We can't take any risks now.

Ref was awful.

Overall it was a complete shit show.

Hopefully not a sign of things to come but we've been pretty crap for a while now. Spurs, Villa, Southampton, Chelsea...

 

[Schmeichel's Cartwheel]

I saw on Twitter Chelsea set a record for most fouls without receiving a card. Anyone know if that’s true? Seemed like they were getting away with a lot.

 

[b20times]

How can teams be tired, is everybody forgetting that there has been a three month break from playing competitive football?
Players should be refreshed and be full of beans.

 

[Untied]

Not really. There was not a single hard challenge (except possibly Zouma on Martial, but that was missed from the referee). There is no 3 fouls and a yellow rule in football.

Rudiger on Greenwood, and the studs on the back of Bailly’s heel that took his boot off leap to mind.

 

[Mount's Goatieson]

Yeah was shocked when Romero didn't play today, Chelsea were smart as they decided against using their keeper who is prone to a gaffe too

It wasn't being smart, it was just sticking to what we've done since the start of the season. Caballero is the keeper for our domes

 

[Berbasbullet]

I saw on Twitter Chelsea set a record for most fouls without receiving a card. Anyone know if that’s true? Seemed like they were getting away with a lot.

Amazing amount of fouls.

 

[Bastian]

What a terrible outlook. Fan or no fans, that was a chance to get to an FA Cup Final where a below par Arsenal team waits. Perfect chance to win a big trophy and build a winning mentality.



Dont care about winning trophies? Again, another disgraceful outlook from a fan. How our fans dont want to win things really irks me.

Get off your high and mighty stance. We have run our players into the ground. Some people on here think logically. They'd have preferred a second string yesterday, and who knows, they might have surprised Chelsea. But we have to prioritise.

You do get an award for being a top red though.

 

[Mount's Goatieson]

Like I said when this draw was made, there was no better way to judge Lampard’s ability to learn from mistakes than to play an opponent who have already beaten you 3 times with the same strategy.
Credit to him. To be a top manager, sometimes you have to acknowledge the strengths of your opponents too and try maintaining a balance between nullifying those threats and imposing yourselves on the game.
Switching the system to a back 3 and incorporating tactical fouls completely nullified United's counter attacking prowess, nipping them in the bud before they even started. Its understandable that United fans didn't like it, its a tactics opposing fans hate but still a tactics anyway.
United's struggles with playing out from the back also played into our hands which I think Lampard also caught on to and played Mount instead of Pulisic(who has been our best player since the restart) to harry and press United's back line into making mistakes which worked.
Our goals was fjust about taking the chances when it came but this game(and against City) is one of the few occasions this season where it was evident we did our homework on our opponent instead of just jumping in and hoping we score more than them.
Kuddos to Frank and hopefully we see more of this next season.