“United were frequently pleasing on the eye, and the quality of their finishing was consistently superb, but they didn’t even have to play particularly well. They passed the ball much better in the 3-0 win over Tottenham and in the 3-2 win over Manchester City. Some of the goals – the Park Ji-Sung shot, the Welbeck header – simply came as they had too much time and space on the ball. Rooney’s three goals came because Arsenal had conceded fouls by diving in. Young’s strikes were superb – yet if they’d been the only goals in a 2-0 win, we would have been here questioning why a right-footed player was allowed to come inside onto his stronger side so easily. Almost everything went wrong for Arsenal.”
Of course, it will be foolish to disregard the attacking threat of Manchester United, but it will also be equally unwise to assume that an improving Chelsea will be battered in the same way some of the United’s opponents were so far this season. The game – win or lose – will be a close one, barring any unexpected incidences (i.e. controversial sending off or a penalty). Here, finally, is the scour report.
But, of course, having higher possession is not always the good thing: it may simply indicate that a team takes longer to build up an attack. Sometimes, it is offensively more efficient to have a little bit less possession with faster attacking build-up.
The fact of the matter is that de Gea is a solid shot stopper(if you can erase his attempt to save Dzeko’s shot in the Community Shield). He (at least according to my Facebook Fantasy Football statistics) has made 24 saves so far and is only topped by Brad Friedel’s 25 in that particular stats ranking. He is not be easily beaten by optimistic shots from outside the box. United has conceded only 3 times this season and all of the goals were resulted from shots inside the 18 yard box.
That does not put Chelsea at too much of a disadvantage because we tend to score from inside the box anyway. Only 1 out of 7 goals Chelsea have scored so far this season has come from outside the 18 yard box (see under: Bosingwa, Jose). Chelsea have the creativity, especially in the likes of Mata, Sturridge and Anelka, to fashion goal scoring opportunities inside the box and they will pose a tough test for United’s defense.
World Football Daily
