When Manchester United and Chelsea faced off last season, it was a tale of two games. United were soundly thrashed by the Blues at Stamford Bridge, before it was the Red Devils’ turn to inflict damage to Antonio Conte’s title-winners
Their 4-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge actually sparked something of a revival for Jose Mourinho’s side, when they went on a long - if fairly unproductive - unbeaten run, whilst the 2-0 defeat for Chelsea at Old Trafford was their final defeat of the Premier League season, and they won every other league game.
It’s hard to imagine the styles of the two sides being significantly different next season. Conte will surely have to rotate his side more as European football becomes a factor, whilst you’d expect Mourinho to be a little more adventurous, but other than that, both sides will look to be solid in defence and explosive on the counter-attack, just as they were last season.
And yet, the summer could be vitally important on that level.
For one thing, both sides could find themselves harbouring two new strikers. Romelu Lukaku is said to have turned down approaches from Manchester United to favour a move to Chelsea, whilst United themselves look to have been busy on the transfer front, with reported moves for defender Victor Lindelof as well as Alvaro Morata.
https://video.footballfancast.com/video-2015/romelu-lukaku.mp4
What that means in practice is that United could have a new centre-back pairing of Eric Bailly and Victor Lindelof. Both men are physical and pacey as well as cool and composed on the ball, which hints that United could be well-built to deal with the threat that physical strikers like Lukaku cause.
Chelsea, meanwhile, will presumably stick to the back three formation which captivated English football last season. It remains to be seen whether Chelsea will have to change that in order to be less predictable next year, but if they don’t, they could be in for problems against teams like Manchester United, who, with the arrival of Morata, would be set up quite nicely to take advantage of an obvious weakness of the system.
The Spanish striker is, essentially, a focal point. He’s not as immobile as Ibrahimovic, but he does lead the line in a way that easily enables link-up play with his teammates. He’ll work the channels and create space for others, and against a back three, that could see centre backs pulled out of position.
It will also allow pacey wide players - Henrikh Mkhitaryan and probably even Marcus Rashford - to run beyond their striker. That means exploiting the spaces in behind the wing-backs and either side of the centre backs - that space which was so often seen as a weakness in Chelsea’s system last season, though most pointed to a vulnerability to aerial dominance rather than pace.
The other big aspect to the first meeting between these two sides next season is the timing of the encounter: it will take place at Stamford Bridge just days after the fourth Champions League group stage games. And so the draw could be crucial in deciding if either side can play a weakened team or will have to travel a long distance to play a European game.
Like all of the fixtures announced, there are so many variables before we get to the game, but the summer will be crucial: if United can add a man to link up their counter attacks, and Chelsea only add players who fit with their 3-4-3 sort of system, that’s the kind of thing that can decide games like this one.