De Gea – Made a string of difficult saves look easy. Kept us in the cup single-handedly with a fantastic save in the dying seconds. Very good with his feet when passing the ball out too. 8
Rafael – Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him struggle as badly as this. Out of position often and easily beat at times. 5
Rio – Easily our best player. Won countless headers and unbelievably composed on the ball when under pressure. Can’t believe anyone is questioning him. 8 (MOTM)
Evans – Had a very good first half but seemed a different player in the second. Skinned countless times, but he was often left with no protection from midfield. 7
Evra – Pushed up early on but was pegged back as the game drew on. Failed to get involved and saw little of the ball. 6
Kagawa – Disappeared from the game completely after the first ten minutes. Seems to be a regular occurrence with Shinji, with no one knowing if he’ll turn up or not. 4
Carrick – Single-handedly dominated the Chelsea midfield at times, providing a phenomenal assist for our first. Left isolated in the second half. 7
Cleverley – Solid first 50 minutes or so but eventually looked really tired leading to him not tracking back and being caught out of position numerous times. Disappointing end. 5
Nani – The focal point to all our attacks in the first half, he looks like he’s finally recapturing his form. Devastated to see him come off. 7
Rooney – Finally looking like a football player again. Grabbed them game by the balls in the first half and looked like creating something all the time. Vanished in the second half. 7
Hernandez – Scored a special goal and linked up well with the midfield. Again, yet another player to disappear in the second half. 6
Subs:
Valencia – Imagine how bad he’s been all season. This was the worst of the lot. Doesn’t deserve a rating.
Welbeck – Brought some energy and drive late on when we were pegged back. 6
Van Persie – Failed to create anything when we needed him. 5
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Oh! I love Valencia rating he was totally useless, we played 1 man down.
I really don’t wanna say that the out of Champions League would make us go downturn. But, it looks like it will be happening closer and closer. The bottom line is I hope we won’t slip away from the top table of EPL by the end of the season.
Last night showed that Chelsea was not a fool and their performance and ability were way higher than us. We can have an excuse that our players were being so tried after a huge match with Real Madrid. But, it is no doubt that Chelsea has a lot of quality players especially in midfield that we still haven’t had on our side for a while. It is really not looking good to play an away game for the FA replay. Looks like we really need luck for the FA replay unless Fergie can make some magic to change the form of his team.
About the player rating, I would give 3/10 to Tom Cleverley. When seeing his performance last night, you really wanted to change him out ASAP. His accurate rate of passing was extremely low and mistaken passes even created several chances for Chelsea to return quick attack. It was lucky they didn’t get any goal in the first half. But, it looked like Fergie had a different thought on that and still didn’t change him out in the second half. It turned out the midfield had no control after all. Fergie tried to re-gain some control in the midfield, but it was a little too late to put Kagawa to the center role and Rooney on the wing. Finally Kagawa was still needed to change out because they decided to play defensive until the end. Like Cleverly, Rooney’s passing was also not accurate. Although Rooney got a goal, it didn’t mean he did well all night. The second goal from Chelsea was triggered from his mistake of passing. So, I would give Rooney 5/10.
I don’t even want to talk about Valencia anymore. He could be the best player of the year before, but he could be becoming the worst player of the year this time. How a player with United number 7 could drop to that worse? I think right back is more suitable for this man than right winger. He should be using as a backup for Rafael, not anymore. But, a guy like him who is lacking of confidence won’t do well even in defensive anyway.
Another thing I would like to point out is, not only in this game, Rooney always tried too hard to create a partnership with RVP, but it turned out it didn’t work that way. Sometimes the passes were not reasonable and that made a lot of mistakes in the front. It could probably be the reason that we saw Fergie didn’t put them in the same line-up recently. Actually, we didn’t see so much partner from these two strikers working out this season so far.
Finally, I want to give some credit to Nani in the recent games. He was the only winger that was in class although his brain was not changing so fast and he was so selfish as well. If we still want to get some silverwares, we should depend on this guy in the rest of the season.
Rio should be banned for that awful move on torres.