Article 80 — United’s Unbeaten Run Ends, Inter Qualifies For The Champions League
From having both my teams playing on the same day at about the same time, the situation has progressed to both my teams playing on the same day, one match after another. To make matters worse, one match kicked off at 1 am and the other at 3.45 am. It’s a marathon and for a 36-year-old body, it is becoming hard to take. In my case, I am not working in a regular job so the flexibility of being my own boss has aided me here.
These were how the matches went:
Manchester United’s 19 games unbeaten run came to a shattering halt in one of the most important matches of the season. Pre-game, I had twitted that it is all well and good going on this long unbeaten run but there needs to be something to show for it at the end of it all. It’s no point we go on this long run and end the season trophyless and in 5th place qualifying for the Europa League again.
In my previous articles, I have also written about seeing how the team would respond to setbacks during a game or after a game. We have shown an ability to overcome conceding first already. What needs to be seen was how the team will respond when they are not at their best on the day or when things don’t go in their favour. What else I wanted to see was how the team would react to being under pressure to perform and win games.
Pre-game there was also a lot of disrespect shown by fans towards Chelsea and that infuriated me. I regard that over-confidence as a bad omen. Chelsea has a very good team and it is not for nothing that they sit third in the English Premier League. We might have beaten them three times across all competitions before this match but it’s not worth much for this match as it’s a brand new game.
On the match itself, there are no two ways about it that we didn’t play well and Chelsea were the deserving winners. The writing was already on the wall in the way we started slowly in our last two matches against Southampton and Crystal Palace. The warning from those two matches was not heeded and we paid a price for it today morning.
On the team selection, the risk Ole Gunnar Solksjaer took in refreshing the squad in view of the heavy workload and the disadvantage of lesser days of rest between their previous match and this match didn’t pay off. I was surprised and disappointed that Solksjaer didn’t give Sergio Romero the start as he has been doing in all the previous rounds. Changing from a four men to three men defence was not an unfamiliar tactic. He has used it to good effect in previous big matches this season. Our defence of Eric Bailly, Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof was going fine until the lengthy injury break at the end of the first half that saw Bailly get stretched off to the hospital.
The break didn’t do us any good as we lost our focus and Oliver Giroud nipped in front of Lindelof to open the scoring deep in injury time of the first half. While Lindelof should have defended better, De Gea too should have kept it out as the shot lacked power. De Gea was at fault again early in the second half, he let a shot by Mason Mount squirm past him. Young Brandon Williams was at fault as well when his wayward pass found Mount. De Gea had kept us in the game and was the main reason for our clean sheet in our previous match against Palace but this season, he has made one too many uncharacteristic costly errors.
We were out-played and out-run in midfield as Fred, Nemanja Matic and Bruno Fernandes struggled to impose themselves. The decision to rest Paul Pogba was not vindicated. Fred and Scott McTominay were in great form before the enforced break but their form has dipped since football has restarted. It was another below-par performance by Fred. Dan James and Marcus Rashford didn’t work upfront. Anthony Martial was brought on to replace the injured Bailly in a tactical change but that too didn’t work out.
All throughout, Chelsea was hungrier and more aggressive. They pressed us hard and made it tough for us to play out from the back. Despite the obvious difficulty of playing out from the back, we insisted on doing so. Playing the long ball out from the back didn’t work too as it didn’t stick with anyone upfront.
I had alluded to this point in my previous post of giving minutes to players that have not played much and the key players should have been rested after we went 2–0 up against Palace. Squad players that were key to our progress to the semi-final like Romero and Odion Ighalo should have been given the faith to start. Solksjaer got things wrong as he had one eye on the next Premier League match against West Ham United instead of being fully focused on this match.
It is a tough ask for us to be expected to beat a team like Chelsea that is arguably on-par with us four times in a season which is why I was dreading a clash against them in the FA Cup semi-final. It is not impossible but Chelsea’s pride would have hurt from losing to us in consecutive matches. Surely they would want to have a say on it and they did. There is also a similar pattern to our League Cup campaign. We have beaten Manchester City three times out of our four meetings against them this season but the one defeat we had against them was detrimental as it meant our elimination from the League Cup. The same thing happened with Chelsea here.
Solksjaer spoke wisely about seeing how the team would respond on Wednesday against West Ham. The bubble has burst, it’s up to the players now to show how much it has hurt them and to respond from it immediately. The leaders in the team got to stand up and be counted as well. Overall, the team has to learn from this experience quickly as there are still two important objectives left, Champions League qualification and one final shot at winning a silverware this season, the Europa League. It appears that we have settled on a very good starting line up, it’s the players off the bench that have to step up. It also shows the importance of further strengthening the squad as it appears to lack quality depth.
The last time we went on a long unbeaten run last season, we crashed and burned after the run ended. We need to ensure that doesn't happen again.
Over to Inter now. Inter confirmed their qualification to the Champions League group stage for the third season in a row. We did it four games in advance which is an improvement to securing the slot on the final day in the previous two seasons.
I went to sleep the moment Chelsea scored their third goal and wrapped up the tie for them and got about an hour’s sleep in before Inter’s game. A match played at 3.45 am in an empty stadium was tough for me to keep my eyes open for long in the first half but a cup of coffee at the break helped me to stay awake for the second half. Roma had the better of the game and possession. They nearly scored first when Samir Handanovic flapped at a corner and Gianluca Mancini missed the target with his header.
We didn’t waste our chance though. Alexis Sanchez swung in a great corner that was met majestically in the air by Stefan de Vrij. De Vrij is the second-highest scoring defender in Europe’s Top 5 leagues with 14 goals to his name.
Roma had most of the possession but didn’t really threaten us until their controversial equaliser. It was clear as daylight that Alexander Kolarov went through Lautaro Martinez from behind without getting the ball. Roma broke on the counter-attack and equalised when Leonardo Spinazzola’s shot was diverted into his own net by De Vrij in a vain attempt to stop it from crossing the line.
I had thought after viewing the incident on the monitor, the referee would reverse his decision. He didn’t. Roma got their equaliser. For all their good play and dominance, Roma never really fashioned much in terms of chances or shots on goal to trouble Handanovic. Our defence held firm. The goal with which Roma took the lead was fortunate and courageous. Henrikh Mkhitaryan went on a trademark run with the ball, he wasn’t closed down sooner or challenged. He then played a ball through to Edin Dzeko and continued his run. Inter dealt with the ball but unfortunately, Alessandro Bastoni’s clearance came off De Vrij and fell kindly into Mkhitaryan’s path who continued his run to give his team the lead.
Inter was struggling to impose themselves in midfield despite the return of Nicolo Barella. Roma had five men in central midfield and kept the ball very well, showing what they are truly capable of. I remember in the reverse game, they didn’t come into in particularly good form but again kept the ball very well and made things tough for us.
Going forward, after scoring first, we did show some glimpses of what we were capable of but always fell at the last hurdle as we got the final ball wrong or the control wrong. Sanchez and Martinez were having trouble staying onside too. Before Roma, equalised, Martinez showed great control to give us what we thought was the lead but it turned out that he was in an offside position when he received the ball.
Romelu Lukaku and Christian Eriksen were thrown on to salvage the game. In my mind, I couldn’t see us getting more than a point out of this game looking at the way we played. Even with the introduction of Lukaku and Eriksen, I struggled to see how we would score outside of set-pieces, a mistake or a great piece of individual skill. It took another substitute, Victor Moses’ persistence to try and nip the ball from Spinazzola in his own box for us to get an equaliser. Moses was clumsily brought down by Spinazzola and Lukaku stepped up to score the penalty.
As the match wore on, I had a feeling that we could have got a third goal to win it even if we didn’t deserve it. In the end, I was just glad we ended the game with one point as we embark on a tough run of fixtures towards the end. Our performance has blown hot and cold in the same match, the form of our players isn’t great, physically and mentally we are feeling the effect of playing so many matches in quick succession.
Our manager Antonio Conte lost his cool in the press conference as he felt Inter was being victimised in the media despite being 14 points clear of Roma and 16 points clear of Milan and Napoli, despite having the best defensive record and second highest attack in the league. He was also unhappy at the lack of rest his team has had between matches particularly aggrieved at the number of late kickoffs his team had.
To me, I feel there can be criticism for the way we are playing now and the fact that we played much better in the first half of the season. We can be criticised for the number of times we have lost a lead in a game because if we had won half of those matches, we would have been top now. There can be criticism as well for failing to improve the team’s mentality. While it can be seen as an improvement to qualify for the Champions League early and that overall, we have the best defensive and second-best attacking record, we know as well that we are capable of much more. We know we should have achieved more.
Conte made a very good point and that is this Inter team for a very long time have forgotten how to see out a match and handle high-pressure situations like they used to do ten years ago. There has to be an improvement in the team’s mentality and experience in managing matches. It will take a lot of psychological work on the team for that to change.
