Terrace Talk: Man United - Living up/down to expectations

On the morning of yesterday’s match, I had a heartening message from a Mourinhoan in Lisbon. “He is so incredibly desperate to beat them today. Apparently, he’s been urging all the players to have ‘no mercy’.”

For much of that first exhilarating half, it looked like the message had hit home, as an urgent and committed United matched Chelsea in almost every department. All one can sombrely surmise is that his half-time team talk can’t have been quite so inspirational.

There can be no quibbling, really. It was evident within minutes of the second-half restart that the game was being wrenched from United’s grasp by an already inherently better team who’d switched up a gear and left us behind. The goal felt inevitable, as did the relative lack of effective response.