Chelsea were reduced to 10 men inside five minutes of Saturday\u2019s meeting with Manchester United when goalkeeper Robert S\u00e1nchez received a red card.<\/p>\n
Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko’s flick-on sent Mbeumo racing in behind Chelsea’s defence and S\u00e1nchez made the decision to charge out of his goal. He made it outside the penalty area before meeting the United forward, who tapped the ball around S\u00e1nchez and was swiftly dumped to the ground by the Blues stopper\u2019s outstretched leg.<\/p>\n
Enzo Maresca, drenched in the torrential rain, turned around resigned to the red card which was quickly shown to S\u00e1nchez, who removed his gloves and trudged off the field. It was Chelsea\u2019s earliest red card in the Premier League era and the third-fastest dismissal of a goalkeeper in the division\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Est\u00eav\u00e3o was the unfortunate casualty as Maresca introduced backup goalkeeper Filip J\u00f6rgensen. Maresca did not stop there and also removed Pedro Neto, who was replaced by centre back Tosin Adarabioyo.<\/p>\n
The early dismissal prompted an immediate tactical change. Chelsea switched to a five-man defence, with Tosin joining Wesley Fofana and Trevoh Chalobah in the heart of the back line while Reece James and Marc Cucurella remained on either side. The reshuffle aimed to shore up the defence after the loss of S\u00e1nchez and the enforced substitution of an outfield player.<\/p>\n
J\u00f6rgensen\u2019s appearance was just his seventh in the Premier League. His previous six outings saw him concede nine goals, although his last outing provided his only clean sheet in a 4\u20130 triumph over Southampton. The early red card and the subsequent changes defined the opening phase of the match and forced Chelsea to adapt their shape under difficult conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robert S\u00e1nchez was sent off inside five minutes, forcing Chelsea to reshuffle into five at the back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2946,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,969],"tags":[317,260],"class_list":["post-2947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-premier-league","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-bryan-mbeumo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947","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=2947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}