Manchester United\u2019s 1-0 victory over Chelsea was far from a classic, but its significance is clear: United sit 10 points ahead of Chelsea with five Premier League matches remaining and can begin to prepare for Champions League football next season. For Liam Rosenior, the opposite is true. His side have lost four successive Premier League matches and suffered six defeats in seven across all competitions.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere at Stamford Bridge was poisoned by prematch protests against the club\u2019s owners and audible boos at both half time and full time. Chelsea\u2019s Champions League hopes look severely damaged as confidence dips. The Blues produced just 1.55 expected goals, three shots on target and zero big chances. They have now gone four straight Premier League matches without scoring.<\/p>\n
United\u2019s defensive situation was extraordinary. Lisandro Mart\u00ednez and Harry Maguire were suspended, Matthijs de Ligt was sidelined with injury and, on Friday, it emerged that Leny Yoro would also miss out. With four of the five senior centre backs unavailable, Noussair Mazraoui and Ayden Heaven formed an unfamiliar pairing. After a shaky opening, the duo combined for 13 defensive contributions and rarely appeared overawed. Heaven in particular improved markedly after an erratic first 25 minutes and finished the match with an excellent overall showing.<\/p>\n
Bruno Fernandes again proved decisive. The United captain supplied his 18th Premier League assist of the season and has taken his chances created total to 109, 49 more than the next best, Declan Rice. He sits two assists shy of the single-season record of 20, set by Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne. Few would dispute another Player of the Match selection, and his credentials for Player of the Season will be hotly debated as the campaign concludes.<\/p>\n
Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez was \u201coff the naughty step\u201d ahead of the game, his return from an internal two-match suspension confirmed by Liam Rosenior, and he was reinstated into the starting lineup for the visit from United.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
United’s 1-0 win over Chelsea left them 10 points clear with five Premier League matches remaining. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,179,172],"tags":[181,342,1047],"class_list":["post-12251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-ayden-heaven","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}