Another trip to Stamford Bridge, another controversial refereeing performance. Once again referee Martin Atkinson got the big calls wrong and they cost Manchester United dearly on Tuesday night as Sir Alex Ferguson’s side slumped to a 2-1 defeat at Chelsea. Wayne Rooney’s superb first half strike had given United a deserved lead at the interval before a David Luiz goal and a Frank Lampard penalty sealed a win for the hosts in the second period.
Ferguson’s post-match ire at the referee, which may yet earn the 69-year-old Scot an FA charge, came after a series of important decisions went against United. It is not the first time Atkinson has been at the centre of controversy involving the Reds. Last season the Leeds-based official ignored two legitimate penalty claims by United’s players and then awarded Chelsea a soft free kick that led eventually to the Londoners’ winning goal.
On Tuesday, Atkinson again changed the course of the game, sending off United’s captain Nemanja Vidic late in the game, failing to similarly show David Luiz red and awarding the softest of spot kicks to the home side. Atkinson also failed to spot a first-half handball by Chelsea captain John Terry that should have earned the visitors a penalty. Decisions that may cost United in the Premier League title race.
But with defeat also comes internal analysis. Atkinson’s awful performance – was it rank incompetence or lack of “fairness” as Ferguson later mused – aside, United capitulated in the second period, with the Reds’ soft midfield underbelly once again exposed. Chelsea’s goals from Luiz, following Patrice Evra’s positional error and then the penalty, after Michael Carrick needlessly gave the ball away, were entirely avoidable.
Worse still, the visitors invited much of Chelsea’s pressure in the second period – unable as United’s midfield seemed to exert any influence on the match. Ferguson’s decision not to strengthen his midfield ahead of the season may yet cost the club.
Still, in the aftermath the Scot chose, understandably perhaps, to focus on Atkinson’s performance and not his own side’s failings.
“You want a fair referee – or a strong referee, anyway – and we didn’t get that,” said Ferguson, who also criticised the Leeds-based after last season’s visit to Stamford Bridge.
“When I saw who the referee was I did fear it. I feared the worst. It was incredible. Even before that he [Luiz] had done Chicharito off the ball. He’d done him late. Nothing done, the referee’s in front of it.
“He does Rooney clear as day, [the referee is] six yards from it, he doesn’t do anything. That changed the game. These are decisions that change the game. And he’s going to be refereeing every week.
“That’s three years in a row now. It’s hard to take. The Luiz foul was six yards in front of the referee, maybe eight if we give him the benefit of the doubt, no obstructions whatsoever.
“I don’t know how he [Luiz] stayed on the pitch. And the penalty was very soft. In actual fact, Chris has taken the ball and the player’s left his leg in. Very soft. Amazing.”
In that Ferguson is generous, with accusations of a Yuri Zhirkov dive far closer to the mark as Chelsea clawed its way back into the match with an approach that often sailed close to the wind.
The match began brightly for United though, with Ferguson surprisingly leaving out his top scorer Dimitar Berbatov in favour of Mexican youngster Javier Hernández. It was Ferguson’s first unchanged line-up in 165 matches, dating back to 2008.
And with Wayne Rooney partnering the 22-year-old, United deployed a 4-4-2 system against Chelsea for the first time in recent memory. It created an open match in which the visitors offered the greater threat during a lively first 45. Indeed, Hernández and Rooney almost combined with just minutes on the clock. The Mexican exchanged passes with Evra before firing across the six yard area just out of Rooney’s reach.
Rooney then headed wide as the home crowd got on top of the £27 million United striker. If anything the jeers inspired the former Evertonian who crashed home a wonderful drive on the half hour following an exchange with Nani. Chelsea’s static defence can take the blame for failing to close down United’s talisman but Rooney’s fifth goal in as many games said much about the forward’s increasing confidence.
Still, minutes before the break United could thank Edwin van der Sar for a wonderful double-save, stopping first Lampard’s free-kick and then Branislav Ivanovic’s goalbound effort before clawing away the danger. At 40-years-young United will deeply miss the Dutch legend when he retires in the summer.
Chelsea’s response to United’s first half dominance was as speedy as it was aggressive. Quicker to the ball, sharper in the tackle, more incisive in the pass, the Londoners turned the match around within nine minutes of the restart. Ivanovic flicked on Michael Essien’s cross for defender Luiz to fire past Van der Sar.
The change reflected both Chelsea’s greater drive and United’s inner-capitulation.
Yet, even as United’s midfield became over-run the match could not have turned without Atkinson’s intervention. First, Atkinson failed to spot Terry’s handball, then the Yorkshire-born official twice failed to show Luiz a second yellow card, first for a crude foul on Hernández and then an even wilder off-the-ball hack at Rooney.
More crucial still, Atkinson then awarded Chelsea a penalty as Zhirkov fell over Smalling static leg with just minutes left on the clock. Smalling can justifiably feel aggrieved at both his opponent’s gamesmanship and the official’s incompetence.
In the grand picture Chelsea fought its way back into the game; in the detail officialdom again cost United at Stamford Bridge.
Time will tell whether United’s visit to Anfield on Sunday comes at the right time or not. Vidic’s late-red card for a second yellow card under the totting up procedure robs Ferguson’s side of its captain. It couldn’t come at a worse time, with Jonny Evans and Rio Ferdinand still injured.
Yet, there is no better match to focus United’s collective thoughts.
“At the moment we feel pretty down, but we can move on quickly. We have to,” midfielder Carrick told MUTV.
“We’re used to doing that and we’re normally good at that, so hopefully we can bounce back again. We have to get rid of this game, forget about it and move on. It’s obviously a huge game on Sunday and we’ll be ready for that. We have to be.
“That’s the nature of the beast. We move on and we take a lot of positives from tonight and look to put things right that didn’t go well. We’ll be ready.
“It is disappointing, especially after the first half and the way we played. We were in control. Second half we weren’t as quick and decisive in our passing as we were in the first half, but we still felt quite comfortable and I still thought we might score again.”
The Reds didn’t and Ferguson must hope that defeat at Chelsea doesn’t ultimately cost United the title.
Match Facts
Chelsea – 442 – Cech; Ivanovic, David Luiz (Bosingwa 81), Terry, Cole; Ramires, Essien, Lampard, Malouda (Zhirkov 71); Torres, Anelka (Drogba 61).
United – 442 – Van der Sar; O’Shea, Smalling, Vidic, Evra; Fletcher, Carrick, Scholes (Giggs 70), Nani; Rooney, Hernández (Berbatov 70).
Attendance – 41,825
Man of the Match – Rooney
Possession: Chelsea 53% – 47% United
Attempts: 17 – 12
On Target: 6 – 5
Corners: 10 – 2
Fouls: 11 – 14
great goal by rooney. well struck goal by luis, who i thought played really well, but should have been sent off.
luis not being sent off, and then chelsea earning a very cheap penalty 30secs later changed the game completely. just disgraceful refereeing. nothing else to say really.
we were the better side in the first but in the second we were dreadful. hernandez got tired and berba offered nothing when he came on to go with a toothless looking midfield.
but once again we got refucked, last season it cost us both games with the dirty blues and the title.
hopefully this year we can do enough to win the title despite the refs and a poor midfield.
atkinsons from leeds go figure
It’s simply too much of a coincidence now that Atkinson gives so much decision against us whilst being so lenient towards Chelski in particular. He’s done us on just too many times! If we were in a Court of law (and I know what im talking about!) there would be enough evidence to convict Atkinson of fraud and corruption. As it is Football is governed by different rules (as the most corrupt and secretive organisation in the world) and the competence and integrity of refrees cannot be impeached even when the evidence is overwhelming!!
As for United, we are just paying the price for our pathetic displays against shit teams…Fulham, Everton, Wolves…just to name a few. Had we played against these teams like we did against Chelski in the first half then defeat yesterday would be irrelevant (though it would hurt as much!).
Arsenal was crushed after the Carling Cup defeat…we have now thrown them a life line.
Too many of our players just don’t make the cut anymore. Carrick is piss poor; Anderson played well for 6 weeks whilst his contract extension was being negotiated-not he’s back to his pathetic worst; Fletcher is uninspired; Gibson is crap shit-if he’s good enough to play for United then anyone who ever kicked a ball in the whold world is good enough for us; Rooney is just not getting enough prostitue sex to be effective as last year (clearly Collen doesn’t satisfy him-why the hell do footballers or anyone for that matter marry at 24??.
To top it all, Fergie is losing the plot. Playing boring, ineffective, uninspired 4-5-1 against teams like Wolves, Birmingham, etc and the 4-4-2 against Chelski!!! Where is the sense in that?? He’ll probably go bold against Livershit too on Sunday which will ensure another defeat!! Our lack of quality is costing us badly. We can’t even line up 2 wingers in a game!!
In a stupid way its good…since if Fergie was able to pull the Premiership out of a hat with this crappy lot then he would peobably tell us ‘I’ve got all I need’ again this summer which would’ve ensured another year of ‘shit on the stick football’ from a team which in the near past used to entertain and score for fun…it’s simply too painful to see the team going down the gutters and we don’t even know who to blame…the fucking Americans or Fergie…as always it must be a bit of both!!
You’ve got say that we are major underdogs going into Sunday. We are a far lesser team without either Vidic or Ferdinand, and we are missing both. To be honest whichever way we set up the best result I can see is a draw. Pack the midfield is the best way to do that I think.
Daily Mail columnist and ex-referee Graham Poll writes…
“Referee Atkinson got the big calls wrong
Referees are remembered for their big decisions in big games. Unfortunately Martin Atkinson got some wrong on Tuesday night and they cost Manchester United. Atkinson failed to deliver consistency in similar incidents, the basic requirement for match officials. In the first half, Manchester United were denied a penalty when John Terry handled a shot from distance. Although his hands were by his side, the ball travelled a long way and Terry ensured that the ball did not pass – a clear offence. Nothing was given. However, when Yury Zhirkov took the opportunity to go over Chris Smalling’s outstretched leg, Atkinson had no hesitation in awarding the home team a spot kick. It was soft, but just about the correct call. An even clearer example came when David Luiz deliberately tripped Wayne Rooney off the ball – a clear cautionable offence. As he had already been cautioned, Luiz should have been dismissed. Nemanja Vidic was not afforded such tolerance later in the game.”
There is no way to defend our midfield… it’s rubbish… everyone knows it’s rubbish… I think even Ferguson knows it, though he continues to ignore it… and I think that was largely responsible for last nights loss of initiative.
We were giving The Renties a pasting for the first half hour, and not only scored but should have had a penalty, and perhaps then a 2 goal lead going into half time…
The thing is, and we’ve seen it many times this year, once we take a lead, Ferguson shows just how little faith he has in our midfield by pulling back forward resources, and falling into defensive mode to hold what we’ve got… and it results in us hanging on by the skin of our teeth for a dodgy win, or conceding, and ending with a draw… or at worst, last nights loss.
We need more than just a midfielder, and some would say we need 2… but for me, the most important signing we need is a midfield titan… a world class midfield general, who can not only stamp his authority on the mdfield, but on the whole team… a leader, a proper captain… it is the nature of Ferguson best teams to have one… Robson, Ince, Keane… someone to challenge all the players around him to charge forward when needed, or dig in when needed… it has been said so many times lately that we are gutless when the game gets hard… and yet we do have some real fighters on the team… but they’re leaderless… Rooney, Fletcher, most of our defense… these players would die on the pitch if pushed… and the rest of the team need someone to bully and shame them into action.
What scares me is that we’ll somehow slide over the line, and win the title again… and Ferguson and the Glazers will see that as, “job done, success, and no need to fix what ain’t broke”…
Having said all that… I still think we were robbed by the ref last night…
“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching’ tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you.”
Crying about the refereeing is lame and I wish everyone, including our fearless editor, would knock it off. Bad calls are part of the game. We’ve been the beneficiaries in the past as well as the victims. Get over it. A court of law? Oh, shut up.
Crying about intangibles is what lesser teams do, like Mancini bitching about pitch conditions when City underperforms. We are United. We’re still in first place. Shit happens. Stay focused.
Zombie – You’d rather I ignored it altogether and didn’t mentioned the poor referring? That’s ridiculous. What other teams do, say Arsenal, is blame everybody else and fail to see where the real problems lie. As I said – big picture Chelsea clawed themselves back into the game; the details were too often down to the referee. Bigger picture still – United’s midfield isn’t good enough hence the title “Reds unlucky but capitulation comes from within” – the within, since it seems to have escaped you – United.
Ed – Point(s) taken.
Although I mentioned you in my original comment, I was really addressing my fellow commenters more than your post. Yes, I think the poor calls are worth mentioning, but as you pointed out, they were just one contributing factor. We were outplayed in the second half and we didn’t have the horsepower to hold off a determined side.
The conspiracy-minded comments (boo-hoo! this always happens to us!) distract from the real issues of personnel and formation challenges. We’re still in first place. This will not be a seamless joyride to a photo op with the trophy, but did anyone really think it would be?
Scholesy retiring may make Fergie realise, if he doesn’t already, how pressing the need is for there to be world class midfield reinforcements.
There’s no argument that we were second best in that second half but as Alf says, what cost us the match itself, was the referee’s poor performance. There’s no doubt in my mind that we would have at least emerged with a creditable draw had the ref done his job properly – and nobody would be talking about our midfield.
I do agree that we may have contributed to our own downfall with a “what we have, we hold” mentality but that doesn’t tell the full story of how we were beaten last night.
“We are United. We’re still in first place. Shit happens. Stay focused.” Precisely… now crack on and entertain us by battering the dippers on Sunday. all the top 4/5 will keep dropping points forget about last night. Everyone stop whinging!
I have not mentioned Atkinson because as soon as Rooney was not banned I felt we might be in trouble. Which I found quite annoying for it was instigated by the vast Chelsea/London influence in the media and they will haunt United as far as they possibly can. Everyone ignored the fact that stupid MCarthy had stepped in front of Rooney as United countered.
We must not lose at Anfield. I think Rio will be fit.
I don’t think anyone denies our midfield needs serious strengthening. However, our midfield was good enough to beat Chelsea yesterday, and would certainly have at least drawn if the refereeing had been anything like fair or competent.
Fergie got his tactics exactly right. He saw that Chelsea have been struggling to adjust to a 4-4-2, and that they’ve been leaving big gaps between the central midfield two and their defenders (a problem we’ve been struggling with away from home this season as well). So he put Hernandez in to pin their defenders back, because they couldn’t maintain a high line given his pace. Then he put Rooney in to operate in the gap between Chelsea’s defenders and midfielders, which he was doing brilliantly in the first half, and of course he also has a decent bit of pace on him himself. Nani and Fletch were doing very well on the wings, so Scholes and Carrick were able to do what they do best: sit relatively deep, and ping balls straight past Chelsea’s midfielders to our attackers.
In the second half Chelsea came out fired up. Their defenders moved forward to compress their playing area because they had little choice — they had to score and do a better job of connecting their defense, midfield, and attack. This actually *did not work*. They took a chance and it backfired: on several occasions Hernandez and Rooney had the beating of Luiz and Terry, and they were forced into last-ditch yellow card fouls to stop very good goalscoring opportunities. But the ref didn’t punish them, so they had an enormous advantage the whole second half. Not just in getting the good calls, but this allowed them to play over a much smaller area of the pitch than we could.
This is why they seemed to be swarming all over our midfield: because the ref negated our pace advantage. Every newspaper’s coverage of the game comes in two varieties. They either (1) acknowledge we were shafted by atrocious officiating, or (2) they use all sorts of vague terms to describe Chelsea in the second half like “increased aggression”, “put United under more pressure”, “were more forceful” and blah blah blah, but can’t explain coherently what Chelsea did differently. Whether the writers know it or not, their struggling to describe a strategy of systematic fouling.
There should be some way where a team can object to a referee before he officiates a game..too late to criticise after. Atkinson was a horrow show. I think they call these kind of referees “homers” as he was afraid to make big calls against the home team and made his decisions based on crowd decibels. I just hope the match assessors send him down to the Vauxhall for a few weeks.
Now we are only going to win the league with 2 games to spare and not 5!
Was howard webb on paternity?
Very good analysis by bman.Ferguson did get his tactics right in the first half but didn’t adjust quickly enough in the second when Chelsea came out fighting.Fletcher should have gone straight into centre midfield where he could have done what he does best. How many high profile mistakes is Carrick going to make in important matches?
And Ed is completely right to mention the pathetic ref. Bad decisions cost points and titles.Its bad enough when it happens anyway but when it is by a ref that has history, not only with United but particularly in Chelsea/United games it is relevant.
On another point-is the fact Evra has signed a new deal significant?I’m sure he would be off if there was going to be no new signings in the summer.
I cannot blame any United players for underperforming against Chelsea; it was as good as I’ve seen them play this year; the only reason Chelsea dominated the second half was because the referee let them away with numerous blatant fouls, abandoning all pretence of impartiality in the second half.
As for those people who say we should ignore the bad referee and concentrate on our own performance I can only say that the people who are trying to debase the English game despise you for your weakness; that’s why it keeps happening and that’s why it gets worse every time.
The only way to change this is to mobilise the purchasing power of United fans worldwide and fight them with our wallets; money talks and bullshit walks and there’s nothing like the withdrawal of custom to earn the respect of people in power!
Aye, let’s get United handle their own TV rights. That’ll bring the FA and Sky down a notch or two.
No use playing nice with Chelsea/City/Arsenal who don’t even match up against United in world viewership.
to be fair, mutv was fucking shite last time i had it