CHELSEA v Manchester United: Preview | OneFootball

Date: Sunday 28th February 2021

Venue: Stamford Bridge

Kick-off: 16:30 GMT

After a successful night in the Champions League midweek, this afternoon’s game sees us back at Stamford Bridge to take on Manchester United.

After the draw against Southampton last weekend, we slipped to fifth, 2 points behind West Ham, United meanwhile, are in second, 13 points off the league leaders at the start of the day. United come into the game off the back of a 0-0 draw with Real Sociedad in the Europa League on Thursday, although they had a 3-1 win over Newcastle in the Premier League last weekend.

Chelsea haven’t had a win against Manchester United in the Premier League since November 2017, so Ole Gunnar Solskjaer hasn’t experienced a defeat at Stamford Bridge as a manager. United are also unbeaten on the road in the league this season, with eight wins and four draws from 12 games.  They’ll be quite happy to give us the lion’s share of possession because they’ll know there’ll be decisions chances against us, and they have players who can finish the job for them.

As for Chelsea, we’ve improved defensively but the same improvements haven’t happened in the final third, so whilst we can be frustrating to play, we can also be pretty frustrating to watch.  The draw against Southampton last time out in the league, also showed our benevolent streak in defence hasn’t gone away altogether, and Bruno Fernandes will expose any weakness there today.

MANAGER’S VIEWS

Going into today’s game, Thomas Tuchel says “Hopefully we can win – this is what we go for. We know it’s a big challenge because of their unbeaten away record. We know what we’re up against; a team that can hurt you any second with individual quality, with speed. They are strong away, they can defend very compact, they are very, very good in transition. It will be a big challenge to defend all this. The implication is huge, of course. If we get a win out of this game it’s huge for us. If they get a win it will be huge for them, to put a difference between us.”

Manchester United manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, meanwhile, says “Thomas has done really well as it’s never easy coming into a season half way through. But hopefully we can stop that run, that’s my job now. We know he has come in and it’s changed a little bit at Chelsea and it’s going to be a great challenge for us. But we have improved even though we’re still nowhere near where we want to be – higher up the table and winning trophies. We just have to focus and tick one game off at a time but the three games (away) are massive we’ve got Chelsea who are just behind us and we’ve got City who are in front of us. We can’t let them run further away if we have ambitions of catching them and we can’t give Chelsea too much hope to catch us either.”

SQUAD NEWS

For Chelsea, Thiago Silva (thigh) remains out.

For Manchester United, Paul Pogba, Phil Jones and Juan Mata are out, but Scott McTominay, Donny van de Beek and Edinson Cavani could return.

TEAMS

CHELSEA (Possible line-up): Mendy; Azpilicueta, Christensen, Rudiger; Hudson-Odoi; Jorginho, Kovacic; Alonso; Mount, Giroud, Werner

MANCHESTER UNITED (Possible line-up): De Gea; Wan-Bissaka, Lindelof, Maguire, Shaw; Fred, Matic; Rashford, Fernandes, Greenwood; Cavani

LAST SEASON

Chelsea 0-2 Manchester United (17th February 2020)

CURRENT FORM (PL)

CHELSEA: DWWWWD

MANCHESTER UNITED: LDWDDW

OTHER STUFF

PREDICTION

BBC Sport: Chelsea 1-1 Manchester United

Sky Sports: Chelsea 1-0 Manchester United

Sportsmole: Chelsea 1-1 Manchester United