Chelsea suffered another harrowing defeat in their pursuit of the Premier League title, as Manchester United tore apart a makeshift Blues defence with the pace of Marcus Rashford.
Chelsea had already lost Thibaut Courtois before the teams were announced, but Antonio Conte lost yet another key component of his squad when Marcos Alonso pulled up during the warm-up at Old Trafford.
This made for a shaky start that the Blues never really recovered from, as Ander Herrera picked the ball up – albeit after a blatant handball, and sprayed an inch-perfect pass in behind David Luis and into the stride of young English forward Rashford who sped past the Brazilian and tucked the ball under stand-in keeper Asmir Begovic.
From the early setback of Rashford’s goal, Chelsea didn’t manage to kick on in search of an equaliser and instead found themselves on the back foot of Herrera’s midfield battling and the intricate link-up play of Jesse Lingard and Rashford.
A half-time rollicking was expected to produce a far greater yield than the fruitless exploits of Chelsea’s pitiful first half, but it did quite the opposite, with Manchester United instead allowed to apply the same sort of pressure as they had done previously. The pressure eventually told, seven minutes after kick-off, just like in the first-half, but this time it would Herrera who scored, his shot taking a huge deflection off Kurt Zouma to deceive Begovic and give United a virtually unassailable 2-0 lead.
Here are our player ratings from the defeat:
