THE VERDICT: PREMIER LEAGUE
NO CASE FOR THE
Zouma the worst culprit as Chelsea self-des
IAN
LADYMAN
Football Editor at
Old TraffordA
S MANCHESTER
United broke away to
score their fourth goal,
Chelsea defender Kurt
Zouma was lying flat on
his back in the opposition’s
penalty area. Given the kind of
afternoon Zouma had endured
up until that point, it felt like
the safest place for him.
The young Frenchman — trying to
start again at Chelsea after a serious
knee injury three years ago — will have
better days than this and so too will
Frank Lampard’s team. This was
simply one of those to forget.
A four-goal margin was not necessar-
ily indicative of the way this game
went. Chelsea had enough possession
and opportunities to score but could
not. They hit the woodwork twice in
the first half.
But United were better across the
back, quicker and more decisive on
the counter and, crucially, did not
make the individual mistakes that
Chelsea did. At this level, a team
cannot defend like Chelsea and expect
to take anything but disappointment
from a big game. If they do not improve
very quickly then things are likely to
get ugly pretty quickly against
Liverpool in the Super Cup in Istanbul
on Wednesday.
Zouma was the worst of the bunch at
an increasingly energised Old Trafford
and the timing of that was particularly
unfortunate for the 24-year-old and his
manager. With Lampard having jetti-
soned David Luiz to Arsenal in the
week and without the injured Antonio
Rudiger, he needed something
worthwhile from Zouma here and got
absolutely nothing like it.
He was not alone. Cesar Azpilicueta
failed miserably to get the right side of
Anthony Martial as United scored
their second goal and then let Marcus
Rashford run clear on to Paul Pogba’s
pass a minute later. That was the game
right there. Gone in 60 seconds.
But it was Zouma who set the tone of
Chelsea’s afternoon with a series of
errors in the opening moments.
Martial should have scored after
Zouma played the ball straight to him
under absolutely no pressure in the
seventh minute and the Chelsea
defender tripped Rashford 10 minutes
later, allowing him to give United the
lead from the penalty spot.
At this stage, Zouma was United’s
best player. Soon, he was booked for a
wild thrash at Andreas Pereira and no
sensible bookmaker would have
offered long odds on a red card coming
at that stage. Zouma (below) did
stay on, but to whose benefit it was
increasingly hard to say.
On the touchline, Lampard knew
that his team were
well in the game
for a long time.
With an hour
gone, Chelsea
were only a goaldown and, though it is hard to agree
with suggestions they were the better
team, they were in charge of much of
the possession and it very much felt at
that time as though a goal for the away
side could completely change the
direction of the game.
Equally, this was a little too familiar
of the Chelsea of recent times. Lamp-
ard’s team had a fresh look to it with
three young Englishmen — Tammy
Abraham, Mason Mount and Ross
Barkley — given attacking roles. But it
was also easy to recognise in that too
often Chelsea’s neat, progressive
football floundered in the final third
for want of a real focal point.
Abraham began the game well and
could have scored the day’s first goal,
driving a shot like a cannon against
the post in just the fourth minute.
Mount, a star for Lampard on loan at
Derby County in the Championship
last season, also made an early impres-
sion with a lovely touch, turn and shot
that brought a sharp save from David
De Gea.
Sadly, this threat was not to last.
Mount could not find enough of the
ball as the game wore on while the
United central defensive partnership
of Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof
proved too clever and too physically
capable for Abraham, the young
forward being wrestled to the floor by
Maguire to begin the sweeping
move that led to the game’s decisive
second goal.
In the directors’ box England man-
ager Gareth Southgate will have been
thrilled with Maguire’s competitive
United debut and indeed the work of
another debutant defender, right back
Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Both were almost
faultless. From Chelsea’s attacking
three, Southgate will have seen some
potential and not much else.
Ultimately that will not be enough for
him or indeed for Lampard.
The new Chelsea manager looked a
little peeved as he spoke afterwards.
Like the rest of us, he knew this was a
rather strange 4-0 game.
It is up to him to find a way forward
though and, although the likes of
Rudiger, Willian and N’Golo Kante will
help him greatly when they return to
full fitness, Lampard will know that
this is a team with some deficiencies
at its core.
Kante was on the field for the final
moments but his main contribution
was to lazily hack down United’s young
goalscorer Daniel James. Most unlike
him. Meanwhile James’s uplifting goal
a minute or two earlier summed up
things, rather. In space on the right,
the young Welshman actually delayed
his shot a little too long and when it
came it needed a deflec-
tion from a defender
to find the corner
of the goal.
Proof perhaps
that when it’s
your day, it really
is your day. The
opposite is equally
true.Main culprit:
Zouma had a day
to forget REX«
1
CHELSEA’S 4-0 loss to
Manchester United
yesterday was their
heaviest-ever defeat on
the opening day of a
season. This is the
club’s 104th
season.Focus:
Maguire
evades
Tammy
Abraham
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