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Sir Alex Ferguson was red-faced with rage earlier this season
when relatively innocuous remarks by him were, he says,
misinterpreted as a snide suggestion that Chelsea's squad was too old to win the title this
season The irony is that today Chelsea did play like a team that is
past it.
Finesse was not present for much of this afternoon and in its
absence the fastest, most lively team triumphed. It is not an age
thing – 35-year-old Ryan Giggs was as energetic and alert as anyone
– it's a question of mentality and in that regard Chelsea looked
jaded and stale. Michael Ballack and Deco were as lethargic as they
have been for most of the season, and Joe Cole was doddery. This
season they have revelled on the road by absorbing blunt pressure
and springing sharply forward, but United's speed and dynamism –
and certainly not their passing, which was often as erratic as
Chelsea's – meant the visitors could not rely on that approach.
Chelsea's grumpiness was compounded by some strange refereeing
by Howard Webb - who gave only a short Sunday sermon to Wayne
Rooney after the striker crassly kicked Ashley Cole up the backside
in the 25th minute but then booked Jose Bosingwa for a far less
mean-spirited tackle on Rooney less than 60 seconds later. And the
more cantankerous the Pensioners got, the less they focused on
their own ailing game. Ballack took to falling over, Didier Drogba
to bleating and gesticulating and Luiz Felipe Scolari to waving
imaginary yellow cards.
No Chelsea player showed the sort of nimble thinking that United
demonstrated just before the break. The canny corner routine worked
by Rooney and Giggs proved that United remain as mentally agile in
training as they can be in matches. They have a similar trick they
sometimes use at free-kicks, whereby two United players
deliberately bump into each other as if neither knew the other was
going to take it and then, as the defence drop their guard to mock
the apparent mix-up, United quickly deliver. This time, alas, they
were thwarted because the officials were as sluggish as their
opponents, but Chelsea did not have the alacrity to use the
reprieve to reorganise and John Terry found himself attempting to
mark two opponents when the more conventional re-take was delivered
and Nemanja Vidic headed into the net.
Whatever Scolari said at half-time had no discernible effect.
Bosingwa looked befuddled and almost disinterested as he allowed
Patrice Evra and Cristiano Ronaldo to effortlessly forge space for
the former to cross for United's second and both Berbatov – who
missed his header - and Rooney beat dozing defenders to the ball.
Thereafter, rather than rally, Chelsea got ever more ragged. The
ease with which Berbatov poked into the net when unmarked four
yards from goal was symptomatic of a deep malaise.
Chelsea urgently need new blood, not merely to provide Scolari
with more options but also to stimulate a listless team. Their
problem is, however, that Roman Abramovich's appetite also appears
to have waned.
