Mourinho opts for a focus on man-marking again in a big game, and is able to secure a win at home to Conte’s Chelsea, just as he did last season.

Mourinho’s defensive strategy

As alluded to already, the United manager chose to build his defensive strategy against Chelsea heavily around man-marking. This meant that United’s defensive structure mostly ended up matching up to Chelsea’s attacking one. United defended with a ‘box’ midfield of McTominay and Matic in the two deepest positions to match up with Willian and Hazard, along with Pogba and Sanchez as the two more advanced players, up against Kante and Drinkwater.

Up front, Lukaku and Martial started from relatively wide positions, near Chelsea’s side-backs. This, combined with the passive man-marking behavior from the midfielders, meant that Chelsea’s central defender, Christensen, often was left with a lot of space and very little pressure when in possession. Lukaku was usually the player to close him down, but Christensen still had plenty of time on the ball, however unfortunately for Chelsea, he was unable to create to really create further advantageous situations from this. This wasn’t necessarily just a case of poor individual decision-marking, though. A central defender being able to bring the ball out with minimal pressure is often a good cue for the team to look to exploit the space behind the opposition’s defence, or at least look to play vertically. However, United’s defenders were very committed to defending the space behind, unafraid to drop deep early. Furthermore, Willian and Hazard, two players who would be key for Chelsea if they wanted to play into depth, were tightly marked by Matic and McTominay, including when making runs behind the defence.

The fact that Matic and McTominay were following Chelsea’s attacking midfielders even when they moved onto the last line created some unusual (well, maybe not that unusual for Mourinho) defensive structures, in which United had up to six players in the defensive line, even when they weren’t defending in a low-block. This led to strange scenes in which there was essentially a large empty space between United’s front four + Chelsea’s centre-backs + centre-midfielders, and United’s ‘back six’ + the players they were marking. This space is something that Chelsea might’ve been able to exploit more, for example by using vertical passes to Morata, followed by lay-offs to the likes of Willian and Hazard, moving into the space dynamically rather than occupying it, which allows them to use the inherent reactive nature of man-marking to create separation from their markers and get them into forward-facing positions with the ball.

One attacking ploy which was used by Chelsea on a few occasions was switching the ball to the opposite wing in order to find isolation situations for their wing-backs against United’s full-backs, especially when Willian and Hazard had both drifted to the same side of the pitch, taking their marker with them, meaning that the United full-back on the opposite side won’t have the support of his defensive midfielder in an isolation situation. Another aspect which increased the extent to which United’s full-backs could potentially be isolated was the large gap between United’s centre-backs and full-backs, which was caused in part because of how close United’s two centre-backs stayed to each other for most of the game, which was presumably to try to neutralise Morata.

Interestingly, Mourinho commented on United’s defensive strategy in his post-match press conference, talking specifically (which is seemingly pretty rare for managers in press conferences) about Lukaku’s role, explaining that the striker “didn’t find the right timing to be in between Christensen and Rudiger, and to press the man on the ball” in the initial stages of the game. This is interesting because around the 20th minute, Lukaku’s positioning did seem to change slightly – he dropped slightly deeper, into a position where he could approach both Rudiger and Christensen diagonally, rather than starting next to Rudiger and approaching Christensen from the side.

It is impossible to know for sure whether that adjustment is exactly what Mourinho was referring to in his press conference, but it was certainly interesting to hear that from him after having seen the small change of positioning from Lukaku when watching the game.

United’s left-sided focus in possession

When they had the ball, most of United’s attacks came down the left side, with Young heavily involved as an attacking full-back, along with Matic, as well as Pogba and Martial, both players who like to drift towards the left side where possible. One would expect the same to be true for Alexis Sanchez, who is known for his strengths in cutting in from the left side. In his role in this game as the right-sided #10, for lack of a better description, he wasn’t really able to integrate himself meaningfully into United’s possession game for large spells.

While the ball was circulating, as mentioned, mostly on the left side, Sanchez mostly just lurked in the centre, near the edge of the box, and overall didn’t look comfortable with his position. United’ attacks generally ended in attempts to find Lukaku with a high cross, which were pretty unsuccessful. The notable exception to this, of course, was United’s goal, where the attack was instead focused more upon the centre, and Sanchez was able to involve himself.

Elsewhere, it was noticeable that McTominay positioned himself very deeply within the team’s structure when United had possession This was most likely not only intended to balance the movement of Valencia as he went forward from the right-back position, but also a measure to protect against the counter-attacking threat of Hazard.

He wasn’t man-marking Hazard when United had possession though, which represents a change from last season’s fixture between these two teams at Old Trafford, where Mourinho effectively sacrificed Ander Herrera as a possession player in order to have him solely focus on marking Hazard, even when his own team had the ball.

2nd half adjustments

Going into the 2nd half, United came out with more intensity in their pressing, with Sanchez stepping forward more often to join Lukaku and Martial in pressing Chelsea’s back three. United were able to force ball-losses from Chelsea much sooner, and in general imposed themselves on the game more than they had in the first half.

Shortly after United’s second goal, scored by Lingard, Mourinho changed United’s shape, bringing on Bailly for Sanchez, and switching to a 5-4-1. This in theory gave United extra aerial presence when defending their own penalty box against Morata and Giroud as Chelsea pushed for an equalizer.

Conclusion

United’s performance improved somewhat in the second half, however this was still not an incredibly convincing performance from them. Only 0.4 xG separated the sides in terms of chance quality (1.3 – 1.7 in favour of Chelsea), but Conte’s side may feel harshly treated after a late Morata goal was disallowed.