The Chels

He actually takes a step forward following the ball rather than his man which allows van Persie the space to score.

Mourinho's approach when taking the lead is excessively risky though - you're depending on the opposition not taking their chances and on the players/ref not making a mistake. I think most would prefer it if we dominated possession and looked for the second goal or at least completely take the sting out of the game. Perhaps sitting deep would be more understandable if we were looking to invite them on to us and play on the counter, but our counter attacking hasn't been great (poor decision making) and more often than not we just look to boot it back to them when we're 1-0 up. What's the logic behind inviting pressure like that?

I think it is best we don't score the winning goal until the last 5-10 mins, else we try to hang on for too long lol. But the approach to the second half before we scored was excellent - creating chances and not conceding many. I completely agree with you and I think most neutrals watching would be wondering the same thing - why don't we just go for the kill ffs!

it was great hearing Schmeichel call him out for being arrogant on MOTD. And yeah Zouma took a step forward which allowed van Persie to get to the ball first.

The team probably practise defending 1-0 leads in training and do well at it but then again we are training on pitches that are the same size as Stamford Bridge (really small) whereas City and United have huge pitches, making parking the bus even more difficult. Hence going for a second would be the obvious and logical solution!

at Gary Neville saying Di Maria was initially playing on the RW to exploit our 'weak link' Luis.

Their starting 11 is worse but they have better squad depth now. Atletico's defence was a bit shaky at the start of the season but they've had 5 clean sheets in their last 6 games now and they're currently winning 1-0 away to Getafe which will leave them 2 points off the top. Personally I think they would beat us again because Simeone and their players would be so motivated after we took 3 of their players.

We hadn't been played off the park like that at home under Jose for a long time. They've lost 3 of their best players to us but I'd still expect them to beat us tbh because their balance between attack and defence in the big games is almost perfect. That excuse works for this game but what about against City when he was fit and we were playing against 10 men? It's clearly Jose's tactic to sit back after 1-0 and as Gary Neville put it, that lack of killer instinct against the big teams is what may well stop us winning the CL.

Perhaps but Simeone's big game tactics are more foolproof IMO (if someone makes one mistake it's unlikely to be costly unlike ours with Schurrle/Iva vs. City). It's also more satisfying seeing your team press the opposition all over the pitch and make chances than sitting back and hoping the opposition don't take their chances. Remember how they completely dominated us at Stamford Bridge while we barely had the ball at theirs?

Yep but they had injuries all over the place including to Luis. They had no outball and were all understandably shattered after a season of high-intensity pressing. You can't really blame them for doing it right at the end of the season. They hardly ever do it - we do it in every big game.

Nobody said he's perfect - just that he's a better manager than Jose because he's better in the big games. Not that controversial an opinion really.

Regardless of who the better manager is I think Simeone's big game tactics are better than Jose's. He tries to limit the number of opposition chances by playing a high-intensity pressing game all over the pitch thereby not allowing them space to play their game. Contrast that to Jose's sitting back tactic which relies a lot on luck.

Second best IMO

Van Persie reacted faster than him to the loose ball. Fine margins but his mistake has (in part) cost us the win.

We were only in control in the sense that they weren't too threatening. All it takes is one chance though as we saw against City and now United. Prevent or at least minimise those chances by pressing them or controlling possession - you don't do that by sitting back though.

The result itself isn't too bad. It's the repeating issue behind it that most (I assume) are annoyed by. Why do we sit back at 1-0 and give the opposition the momentum rather than dominating the game and killing them off? If we're going to go for a more defensive approach then surely it'd be better to press and harrass them all over the park instead of letting them create chances. Stop the attacks at source - don't rely on them missing chances and us being perfect defensively.

Personally I'm not too bothered about the officiating because these things are generally offset over the course of the season. We were really lucky not to concede a penalty when Costa fouled a City play in their box at 0-0 and when Cesc handballed it in the box against Arsenal. We only have ourselves to blame here for not going for the sucker punch.

It's the way we've dropped points though. If we were 1-0 down, fought really hard and came back to 1-1 I doubt the reactions would be so negative. The problem is that we've been 1-0 up against 10 men and a really poor United side and conceded in both games - so we've dropped 4 points because we decided to sit back rather than take control of the game.

Well we all know Drogba is past it and Hazard had a good game. Willian and Oscar offered absolutely nothing going forwards.

End product awful once again. He was 1v1 against Smalling and completely ruined the chance. He can't even get past Shaw ffs.

They're not that much better than us, if at all. Against 10 men we should absolutely be dominating the game and killing it off rather than sitting back.

Every time I watch Mikel play I bemoan us not signing Tiago so much. He can actually dictate the tempo unlike Mikel.

I hate the sitting back approach in big games. It relies on us being flawless and the opposition making mistakes. Can't we press big teams like Atletico do?! Also Ivanovic backing off when Januzaj was attacking him Azpi and Luis are so much better

Just the small matter of it being offside! Hope he does give us a big game Drogba performance today though.

Eto'o scored again, nice finish. Not sure why we let both him and Ba go tbh.