And this is right after a rather dismal tie with Olympique Marseille and a very fortunate Manchester derby, won by Rooney's magic. Sadly, this time United actually deserved to win the game. Luiz should have been sent off for his challenge on Hernandez and the penalty was....well.....very soft. The outstanding Chris Smalling clearly got the ball in the area and if the referee wasn't a complete idiot he would've said play on. Well at least Smalling didn't get sent off. Vidic will now miss the Liverpool fixture after a 90th-minute red card. And since Ferdinand is injured, Wes Brown will have to take his place.
Van der Sar was brilliant in this game. He saved a good shot from Malouda, another from Luiz, but his moment of fame was still to come. After only managing to parry Lampard's free kick straight to Ivanovic, van der Sar still somehow tipped the ball to Vidic who cleared. Vidic, despite his red card, was also rock solid and made several important clearances and blocked Zhirkov's shot which would've went in.
Rooney then scored a low 25-yarder. He seems to be regaining his form at the moment, which is good, because Manchester United need him to settle this crisis of losing 2 out of 3 games when they had previously gone the whole season unbeaten. But United's undoing was in the 2nd half.
They just sat back and defended instead of pushing and pressing Chelsea, who were now free to attack. It was rather debatable why. United had an obvious advantage up front with Hernandez, Rooney, Nani and Scholes all in the mix. At the back, however, they had Vidic, van der Sar, Smalling, Evra and O'Shea. Vidic and van der Sar are undoubtedly world-class, but Smalling lacks the experience for games like this. Evra is way too offensive, and O'Shea isn't very good at all. Maybe Fergie just had this random spazz =/.
Well, Essien swung a cross in and Luiz netted the equalizer. Then, after a random swing of chances, Lampard was basically gifted a penalty which he drove past van der Sar and into the goal, making Chelsea lead 2-1.
If Arsenal win against Tottenham, then they will be within 1 point of Manchester United, an easily catchable distance. Apparently, the center cannot hold.
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