SAF got his lineup correct this time and was tactically correct. How I wish he had played this against Liverpool...we would surely have won then.

It was one of our best away performances against the Big Four. We played with discipline, control and calmness. A little more was expected from Giggs and Carrick but they put in a decent shift. Fletcher was dominant in attack and defence and was so unlucky to give away that freekick. Absolute blunder by the referee.

Rooney was awesome...led the line well, held the ball and had some good chances. Anderson was a little sluggish at the start but completely put Essien out of the game. And Valencia is improving game by game.

Defensively we were very compact and shackled Drogba and Anelka. An awesome performance and we can take heart from the fact that we did not have our first choice defense, our main striker and have not been in good form.

But now we need to build on this victory. No more dropping of points...we cant afford to now.

Definitely encouraging performance that we can compete in the top level even with an injury plagued defence............ Evans and Brown well done!!
No point blaming the ref for the mistake i guess..... Stuff like this happens.... One fatal error did cause us the game but if we keep playing like what we did we can still take what belongs to us back.....

A brave performance by the lads. We certainly didn't deserve to lose. Our midfield dominated their diamond. Encouraging performances by Evans and Brown. I am disappointed that we lost but sometimes decisions like this go your way, sometimes they don't. Over the course of the season everything evens out. So, we need to look forward instead of whining about the past. Our next 7-8 games are there for the taking. Its time to kick start a winning run just like we did last year after the loss against Arsenal.

Unexpectedly well played by United,without many injured players.We deserved to win.But luck was with them.Moreover we really need someone to replace Ronaldo.Rooney was as good as ever,but the surprise of the night was Johny"Bravo"Evans.

anderson was like 'the curious case of benjamin button' :P/ no one can understand what he is upto. did you see how he reacted when drogba tried to get him in the fight when carvalho went down whining. he still looks like he is 14 years old. lol

Not Disheartning ...
Look at the players that were missing for UTD

Vidic
Ferdinand
Berbatov
Park
Hargreaves

People like Park,Hargo,O'Shea,Fletcher really make a difference in such matches ...

Hope to have these guyz back very soon ...

But, all-in-all not a great but better-than-chelsea performance by UTD...

The one thing I really missed in today's match was CR7's free-kicks ...
Every time a set-piece was awarded to UTD, I sighed abt how Ronaldo would have converted it into a goal ...
If not anyone else , we should at least go and look for a free-kick specialist in January window ...our guyz nani,rooney,anderson are not up to the mark (when it comes to free-kicks)...

My MOM : Darren Fletcher / Johny Evans

And you selectively eliminate the last bit of that quote? Right after that, he says

"We've played pretty well and have been the far better team"

Cmon mate admit it.

We outclassed chelsea in the midfield.
We've created enough chances in the game to go on and win it
The only reason we lost is because of some piss poor refereeing to let that goal in.

I really don't get Anderson. If you can ping a 40 yard ball out to the flank, should you atleast be able to hit the target from 20 when you're not under any sort of pressure?

I keep expecting him to just open the floodgates and start scoring, but it just never happens

THIS was what he said -

Officially he resumed full training.

But IMO, he will need to play quite a few reserve games. We don't know what his Knee is either. If he's like King and can't train week-in week-out, the recuperation might take longer.

I think he'll get back to full fitness by Jan or so.

Asked if the goal perhaps ruined any chance United had of winning the game, he said: "That goal should not have been allowed.

"We dominated the game, we had great chances to win the match.

"We had great opportunities in terms of the football we played to get in and around the box.

"We should be finishing it off much better, we only have ourselves to blame for that."

Reflecting on the gap at the top of the table, he added: "The fact that Chelsea have gone five points clear of us is a concern."

And I agree.

Honestly, do you actually think our MIDFIELD was creative.??Carrick was piss poor.(he is the guy with visionary passing right?)
.Fletch was busy defending .Giggs was no where in the picture.Valencia was just running around. Cech didnt' drop a sweat against our attack. There was not a single (ACTUAL) chance created except that curling shot from rooney.
Rest were just pointless runs made here and there all around the park.

you can never win a game playing so defensively.We never deserved to win(Simply because we wouldn't create) ,we didnt' deserve to loose either(our midfield was great defensively)

Statistics say that we have won only 2/9 last big 4 meetings ,which is a pretty bad stat..

still 26 games to play...not a problem at all.We are GOING TO WIN THE LEAGUE.IMAO

btw,didier drogba got ninja kicked.(and the refree didnt' do a thing about it.its high time we realise we didnt' play a very fair game and stop blaming the refree too much.)

Ofcourse it's the three points that matters. But at the start of the season, you wouldn't realistically be expected to take 3 points off from the Bridge. The league is over 38 games and it doesn't matter if we loose the game at the Bridge. It means fuckall apart from the silly rivalries that were conjured up as a part of football.

What would the three points at Anfield have mattered for Liverpool if they lost against Stoke (?) right next week?

As to the second part, we DID deserve to win or atleast get a draw out of it, and people are just frustrated because of the manner in which we conceded.

It will be difficult but not impossible? We were 8 points adrift last season at this stage. We have an excellent run of fixtures coming up and Chelsea, Liverpool need to visit OT in the run in to the title which is obviously a HUGE bonus.

As far as I'm concerned, we had a brilliant game today, pity we didn't win, see you at OT, title race is on.

Our chances?

Two really good ones for Fletcher, Carrick which they scuffed.
Poor play by Rooney to not setup Anderson in the first half.
Rooney's shot
Rooney offside poor call when he was through
Giggs poor control after he was put through by Fletcher.

For an away game of this magnitude, we did brilliant.

And again, what exactly did Chelsea create?

Nov 9
faizan
Performance was very good.We made drogba, lampard and ballack look average.Fucking ref robbed us again.
We never have easy fixtures to built on momentum.Easy fixtures are coming ahead Everton(H), Portsmouth(A), Westham(A), Villa(H), Wolves(H), and Fulham(A)..

Taking Postives out of the game is nothing when Chelsea play so badly and still manage to get 3 points from us.

You are either on a WUM or just totally missed the point. Chelsea were made to look bad by our midfield. Our CMs outclassed their 4 man MF.

That is the biggest positive you can take out of this game. After the mauling that we had in Rome and Anfield this season, I completely lost faith in our midfield partnership. But now, I'm damn sure the current MF is up for it.

Admiteddly, a very good performance by Manchester United, but it counts for nothing when you dont get 3 points. Doesnt contribute to the dressing room atmosphere as well.

Getting anything away from the Bridge is obviously a very big positive, but SB is a fortress for a reason, and we're only five points adrift of the leaders. We are still sorting ourselves out after Ronaldo's departure and I'm pretty sure we're still in a great shape to get going during the Christmas period.

We are struggling for goals and depending to much on a certain Wayne Rooney. One long term injury to that man and the season is as good as over for us. Last year we had Carlos Tevez, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov. Now we have an injured Dimitar Berbatov, an exhausted Wayne Rooney and a faded Michael Owen.

Tevez had a crap season last time, while Owen seems to get into good positions everytime he comes on. I'm happy to have a player who sits on the bench without whining every week like that jammy twat who goes b y the name of Tevez.

Exhaustion and Injury are two different things. I don't know what will happen if Rooney gets injured, but I'm pretty sure his exhaustion and fitness levels won't be all that impacted by playing a game every week. Add to that you have Fergie who is probably one of the best man managers of all time and that for most lower opposition we don't even need a Wayne Rooney on the pitch, I'm pretty sure we'll do fine.

Our CM's outclassed their 4 man MF only because Rooney played lone striker up front. We crowded up the midfield and managed to stop them from scoring for what ? 70 minutes ? How did this midfield not create enough to give a clear cut opportunity. 4-5-1 is a negative form of play which i have never seen Manchester United use till now, except in the Champions League. It doesnt matter if dicisions go our way or not, the fact that we didnt get the 3 points is all that i'm concerned with. Stamford Bridge is not an easy place to go, but when we go out there, we should go to win. Our midfield is not creative enough to make clear cut chances. Berbatov has to drop deep when he plays to create some opportunities. We were too busy stopping Deco, Lampard, Ballack and Essien to create our own chances. Yes we controlled the midfield, but we didnt create enough to win.

again which match were you watching ?? we had so many counter attacks in the first half and poor decision making on our part cost us. the rooney long range effort plus some brilliant blocks put out by terry and carvalho. we created more than them, bossed their midfield and made drogba look shite. on the balance of play we were the better team with better possession. proud of the performance. this isnt the first time we have gone 5 points behind. the game yesterday is the best we have played all season. keep that up and we may go on a good run now :)

Hats Off Manchester United. Well played Lads. Did not deserve to lose. Never mind, we played good football which was very good. Mid-Field was awesome. However, we need to finish better. Evans played very well. SO did Wes.(Well Done Johnny,Kicking Drogba). But, now we cannot afford slip-ups. Time to play good football like this and start getting clean sheets. We will be very consistent from here.

Glory Glory Man Utd.

P.S : Last season, Nov 8th, we went to emirates, played a fantastic game of football, Lost. After that we got a clean sheet record. This time, Nov 8th, went to bridge, played a good game of football, Lost. What will we achieve new?Lets wait and Watch.

GGMU !!

See, end product is that we didnt win. It doesnt matter if you play well or not, what matters is the 3 points. We didnt really play pretty football last year, with a string of 1-0 win's. Yet, we got the results which ultimately made us win the Premier League. Obviously, i would rather hope we win 4-0 instead of a 1-0, but i would hope that we win. I never said Chelsea deserved to win, but i dont really think we deserved to win either. It should have been a draw, but we can curse our luck that Terry scored and Chelsea got 3 points. It will be difficult to overtake the 5 point gap but not impossible.

.


Dude, 3 man MFs aren't something we pioneered or something that was just invented.
Not conceding isn't something new for United or for the world. That is how teams around the world have been setting up and will setup for the forseeable future.

It is simply not feasible to play two man MFs and expect them to win the midfield battle to actually provide decent service to the strikers!

Why are you acting as if this we just started this? Do you even remember how we played in the 07/08 season where we won the CL?

It is a perfectly valid tactic and in tough aways, if the opponent packs the midfield, the only way you can be expected to reasonably respond is through packing your own or get trounced. (Or on rare occasions, pull off a magnificent tactical victory like having Ryan giggs in a two man partnership with Fletcher)

Did you even watch the game? We didn't create anything? I'm pretty sure if our MF or Rooney had been only slightly better, we'd've easily gone one up. Clear cut chances? This isn't some noob lower league team to play party football against.

That said, even with such a tight line up, we had several good shooting chances, off the top of my head, for Fletch, Carrick, Giggs, Rooney's poor decision making to go alone instead of Anderson, Rooney wrongly called offside during the first half, Penalty claim for us against Valencia.

That's just off the top of my head.

And what did Chelsea create? Yes, FUCKALL.

What else do you want man? They didn't even manage to break us down. We conceded from an FK that never was, a foul that wasn't given and an offside that was ignored. THAT was what it took for us to concede.

We were fucking brilliant out there today, that will be all.