Those who have only followed Premier League football closely for the past 10 years might be surprised to know there was a time when Chelsea relished playing at Old Trafford.
Between 1996 and 2001, Chelsea sides led by an exciting core of international veterans including Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink lost just once in eight visits in the Premier League and FA Cup. This run was bookended by two upset victories over more heralded Manchester United teams on their own pitch.
More recently, during the first half of the Roman Abramovich era, a more high-powered Chelsea beat United three times at Old Trafford between 2004 and 2010, culminating in a 2-1 away win sealed by Didier Drogba that proved decisive in a closely contested Premier League title race between the two clubs in 2009-10. There were also three draws and three United victories in that stretch, reflecting the delicate balance of power at the top of English football.
But since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in May 2013, less than a month after losing 1-0 to a Rafa Benitez-led Chelsea thanks to a late deflected Juan Mata strike, the Theatre of Dreams has become the Theatre of Pain for a succession of teams from Stamford Bridge.
Their last 11 visits to the stadium, all in the Premier League, have yielded six draws and five defeats.
It is a modern hoodoo that spans eight different Chelsea coaches, two different ownership groups and a sprawling cast of players, made all the more bizarre because it has played out during a decade of incoherence and ineptitude at United in which many other clubs — most with vastly inferior talent and financial resources — have successfully exploited the circumstances to end their own historic losing or winless runs at Old Trafford.
As you might expect with such a long run, there is no single unifying reason for Chelsea’s struggles away against United. They have faced six different coaches in varying positions of strength or weakness at Old Trafford in the last 11 years and different stages of a season (though perhaps with an eye for an end-of-season spectacle, the Premier League’s fixture computer has scheduled the game for April or May four times).
The names of two men, however, feature more prominently in Chelsea’s winless run at Old Trafford than any others: Jose Mourinho and Frank Lampard.
In his second stint as Chelsea manager, Mourinho registered two draws with United in August 2013 and October 2014 against David Moyes and Louis van Gaal.
The first, a drab 0-0 played out against the backdrop of his public courtship of United captain Wayne Rooney, saw Mourinho pointedly set up his team with Andre Schurrle deployed as a false nine. The second would have been a narrow win secured by returning veteran Drogba’s second-half header, were it not for a 93rd-minute equaliser lashed in by Robin van Persie, after Branislav Ivanovic had been sent off for hauling down Angel Di Maria.
Mourinho then switched dugouts and handed Chelsea coach Antonio Conte two defeats at Old Trafford as United boss. In April 2017, with his former club closing in on the Premier League title, he deployed Ander Herrera to man-mark Eden Hazard. The gambit worked spectacularly and the Spaniard even popped up to score the deflected second goal in a 2-0 win, building on the direct move which had enabled Marcus Rashford to break the deadlock.
Ten months later, he got the last word in a public spat with Conte by overcoming Willian’s first-half opener to beat his old employers again. United striker Romelu Lukaku — in what would prove not to be his last unpopular moment with Chelsea supporters — scored a bustling equaliser before crossing for Jesse Lingard to head in the winner.
As well as featuring in the first of these 11 winless matches as a Chelsea player, Lampard has been the man in the visiting dugout for three of their last five visits to Old Trafford.
His first competitive match as Chelsea head coach in August 2019 was a 4-0 away defeat against United, the worst opening-day loss in the club’s history. That scoreline did not reflect the balance of a game in which Tammy Abraham and Emerson Palmieri hit the post and crossbar respectively before the visitors were destroyed by United’s blistering speed in transition.
Lampard managed to secure a 0-0 draw the following season, switching to a three-man defence helmed by Thiago Silva in an empty Old Trafford due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
His third trip in May 2023 came near the end of an utterly miserable return to Chelsea as caretaker manager following the sacking of Graham Potter. United eased to a 4-1 victory after Mykhailo Mudryk, Kai Havertz and Conor Gallagher missed gilt-edged early chances and the visitors’ defence collapsed.
It is Chelsea’s most recent visits to Old Trafford that have done most to establish it as an unhappy hunting ground, and might yield the most pertinent lessons for Enzo Maresca.
Expansive possession football has not served Chelsea well against United’s transitional speed away from home; in all of their last three defeats (the two under Lampard and last season’s 2-1 loss during Mauricio Pochettino’s brief tenure) they were allowed to enjoy more of the ball, only to be carved open repeatedly on the counter-attack.
In the May 2023 meeting, United racked up a barely believable expected goals (xG) value of 5.2. Last season at Old Trafford, they significantly underperformed relative to 4.2 xG against Pochettino’s team. Those figures were boosted by the fact Chelsea conceded penalties in each game, though Robert Sanchez denied Bruno Fernandes from the spot last season.
Scrambled defending in transition leads to more errors and more chance of fouling in the box, as Maresca’s team were reminded against Liverpool at Anfield last month. Chelsea cannot afford to gift United high-quality chances because recent history suggests the courtesy will not be extended at the other end; it is 11 years since they found the net more than once in a game at Old Trafford and they have not been awarded a penalty there in the Premier League era.
United’s coaching flux adds another element of the unknown to Sunday’s meeting. Maresca admitted this week that he has had to scrap the bulk of his early tactical preparation and start watching old PSV Eindhoven matches, following Ruud van Nistelrooy’s appointment as the interim replacement for Erik ten Hag.
Chelsea were highly unfortunate not to beat United’s last interim coach, Ralf Rangnick, at Old Trafford in April 2022; it took several missed Havertz chances and a brilliantly clinical Cristiano Ronaldo finish for the home side to snatch a 1-1 draw.
But that was arguably United’s lowest ebb in the post-Ferguson era. The energy around Van Nistelrooy in the stadium on Sunday is more likely to resemble what was afforded to another club legend, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who recorded a win and two draws at home to Chelsea.
Chelsea fancy themselves to be well ahead of United in the construction of their next great team and the Premier League table offers powerful evidence in their favour. Recent history, however, suggests they will need more than that to end their litany of misery at Old Trafford.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
