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Good evening and welcome to live coverage of the Premier League match between Chelsea vs Manchester United, both of whom have Cup semi-finals the weekend after next as opportunities to take something positive from poxy seasons. They start the game in 12th and sixth respectively but this fixture, which was this competition’s defining match for a good 10 years from 2003-13, has recently been a drab affair and rather one sided. Chelsea have not won home or away in the league against Man Utd since 2017-18, losing five and drawing seven which include one defeat and four draws at the Bridge.
Chelsea, who lost 2-1 at Old Trafford in December, are unbeaten in their last five league matches but have hardly been convincing, provoking something that looks and smells like mutiny among their supporters in the midst of draws with Brentford and Burnley during that run not to mention the howls of exasperation and derision when they were pinned back to 2-2 by Leicester in the Cup quarter-final before ultimately squeaking victory late on.
Stamford Bridge has always been a very demanding crowd and their patience has been all but exhausted by the failure to show any discernible progress since the takeover in the summer of 2022. If everyone were fit, what would Chelsea’s best team be? Still, because of inconsistency of form and despite all the investment, no one has a clue and that’s never a good position to be in.
Mauricio Pochettino doesn’t so much as have an embarrassment of riches as an extravagance of temptations. He might be better off pulling on the hair shirt of his early days at Spurs rather than the mink coat of his years at PSG and sticking to a core of 15 possible starters. But in his defence, who knows how that would play in the boardroom or the massed ranks in the exec suite?
Manchester United have beaten Everton and were truly terrible during their spawny draw with Brentford since losing two on the spin against Fulham and the derby with City. Victory here would close the gap to Spurs in fifth to six points and to eight with a game in hand to Villa in fourth. Like Chelsea, they have lost too many influential players to injury and, although they showed in the Cup against Liverpool that they can rise to an occasion, in truth they have made barely any progress since the end of the 2020-21 season. This, once the most prestigious of fixtures, has become one whose true relevance will be measured only in the scale of the backlash should one side display the meekness that has characterised much of their seasons.
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