The Red Devils overcome the Blues

A determined and well organised Manchester United side narrowly edged out nine-men Chelsea by 3–2 on Sunday after­noon to col­lect their first league tri­umph at Stam­ford Bridge since the 20th of April 2002. The win reduced the gap between Premier League lead­ers Chelsea and second-positioned Manchester United to a mere one point.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United play­ers got off to a mag­ni­fi­cent start and were two goals up within the first twelve minutes. The Red Dev­ils went into an early 1–0 lead in the fourth minute of the battle at Stam­ford Bridge when Neth­er­lands’ inter­na­tional Robin van Per­sie powered a shot that first hit the post, and then deflec­ted off unfor­tu­nate Chelsea defender David Luiz and into the back of the net. Only eight minutes later, Rafael fed the ball out to fel­low South Amer­ican Valen­cia whose low cross ball was con­ver­ted by the ever danger­ous van Per­sie to make it 2–0 to Manchester United.

The West Lon­don­ers hit back when Spain-inter­na­tional Juan Mata halved the defi­cit with a well-executed free kick in the 44th minute of the first period before Brazilian mid­fielder Ramires lev­elled the score with a close range header eight minutes after the resumption. Then in the 63rd minute of the encounter, the home side were reduced to ten play­ers when pacey wing­man Ashely Young was brought down by Ser­bian hard­man Bran­islav Ivan­ovic who was cor­rectly given his march­ing orders by match offi­cial Mark Clat­ten­burg. There was worse to come for Roberto Di Matteo’s Chelsea team in the 68th minute how­ever, when the hosts had yet another player sent off as former Liv­er­pool fron­trun­ner Fernando Torres was red-carded for diving. On a bleak after­noon for The Blues, second half sub­sti­tute Javier Hernan­dez even­tu­ally man­aged to score the win­ning goal for the vis­it­ing side from an off­side pos­i­tion in the 75th minute of the hard fought con­test.

Eng­lish Premier League: Chelsea vs Manchester United 2–3.

Venue: Stam­ford Bridge.

Ref­eree: Mark Clattenburg.

Chelsea Start­ing Lineup: Petr Cech, Bran­islav Ivan­ovic, David Luiz, Gary Cahill, Ash­ley Cole, John Obi Mikel, Ramires San­tos do Nas­ci­mento, Eden Haz­ard, Oscar, Juan Mata, Fernando Torres. Sub­sti­tutes: Ross Turn­bull, Cesar Azpilicueta, Ryan Ber­trand, Daniel Stur­ridge.

Manchester United Start­ing Lineup: David de Gea, Rafael da Silva, Patrice Evra, Jonny Evans, Rio Ferdin­and, Michael Car­rick, Ant­o­nio Valen­cia, Wayne Rooney, Tom Clev­er­ley, Ash­ley Young, Robin van Per­sie. Sub­sti­tutes: Anders Linde­gaard, Javier Hernan­dez, Ryan Giggs, Luis Nani, Danny Wel­beck, Paul Scholes, Anderson.