Chelsea 3-1 Manchester United
A hat-trick from Eto’o – his first in Premier League – ignited Chelsea’s night at Stamford Bridge. It was the 100th win for Mourinho as coach in Premier League and for Manchester United, the struggling season continues.
They have now given up on the idea to keep the title this year. The transition from Sir Alex Ferguson has been difficult, suffering their 7th defeat of the season. Soccer betting lines could not predict this outcome, Eto’o has been playing very well lately. United rank 7th in the League and Chelsea 3rd, right behind City and Arsenal for the title race..
The managers stopped at the media booth to express their feeling post-game:
“I’m delighted with the three points, of course I love it when one of my players becomes a special player in the match and it’s a fantastic moment for Samuel, scoring a hat-trick against Man United. I think we deserved to win, but we didn’t deserve to be winning 2-0 at half time and they didn’t deserve to be losing 2-0 at half time. They started the match better than us and they were a bit unlucky that we scored at the moment”.
‘After that the game was different, we controlled the first half and when we scored the second goal we were in a great position. The third goal basically killed the game but after that they were coming at us. David made changes and tried to reduce the score. When they made it 3-1 I felt my team tired. We are a team that runs a lot and we press very high up the pitch. Our attacking players had big distances to run, United were dangerous, so when it was 3-1 we decided to control the game and the result. It must have been hard for them to have been playing so well in the first 20-25 minutes and be losing.’
Manchester United – David Moyes:
“I would [say we were unlucky to be 2-0 down at half-time]. We were unlucky with the first goal, but the other two that were from set-pieces were our fault. It was terrible defending for the second goal and just as bad as the one just after half-time.”
“I thought we played quite well at times, especially during the first period of the game,” Moyes said. “We had a couple of chances but we lacked that bit [extra], we just needed someone to take the chances.”
Being 14 points away form the top.. “[Top of the league] is a long way away but we’ll never say it’s gone for us. We’ll do our best to get out of it if we can. I keep saying the best thing you can do is go and win your next game and we’ll try and do that.”
