Chelsea keeper Thibaut Courtois believes that the tactics of Jose Mourinho were to blame for last night’s feisty affair, as reported by the London Evening Standard.
The match was marred by a first-half Ander Herrera red card and a clash between Chelsea’s former and current manager.
According to Courtois Chelsea had not prepared for United’s rough tactics.
No, we wouldn’t know beforehand. We can expect from playing Manchester United before that they can play their football very well, but obviously without Martial and Ibrahimovic they can play a different game — and that’s what they did.
The rumours leading up to kick-off were that United could start Marouane Fellaini up top with all their recognised strikers unavailable. But even with Rashford passing a last-minute fitness test to earn a place in the starting line-up, United set out to disrupt Chelsea from playing their game, committing 14 fouls in the process.
Eden Hazard was the victim of the majority of those fouls and drew two yellow cards from Spanish midfielder Herrera.
They were very hard. It was the style of Mourinho – and Herrera paid the price for his team-mates because Jones just before had made the fifth foul on Eden. Then 10 seconds later, you make another foul and the ref has to give another yellow card. Unfortunately for Herrera he’d already had a yellow
Despite the tactics, Courtois felt that Chelsea were able to carry out their gameplay and emerge as deserved winners.
We played our game, we did it our way, like we have for the last six months or so, and we did it well.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t score and finish the game earlier, but it was a good victory, it is good to go to Wembley and now we have ambitions to reach the Final and win it.
Courtois is also looking forward to Chelsea’s matchup with rivals Tottenham, another side that has a history of feisty encounters with Chelsea. The match against the north London rivals makes up one half of a star studded final four of the FA Cup.
It’s going to be tough for both of us. We beat them in the League at home and they beat us away. They are a tough side. But it’s nice for English football to see that there are four top teams in the semi-finals. It hasn’t happened often in recent years. It will be hard for us, but we are on a good run.
The match will be played the weekend of April 22/23 at Wembley Stadium as Chelsea seek to complete the domestic double in Antonio Conte’s first year in charge.
